


Ringwall

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Retro-Dystopian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3457004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More than twenty years later, it's still going on.  </p>
<p>The human population of the world has spent the last two decades gathering together in walled cities scattered across the planet, using tricks old and new to ward their new homes and keep out angels and demons alike.  The most successful of these, a bustling little city called Perdition, is the home of one Sam West, a war orphan grown up knowing nothing but Perdition and its massive, imposing wall.  He's done well for himself, despite his inauspicious beginnings.  He's managed to land himself a gig working for Perdition's mayor, and even been given the responsibility to plan out the city's 20th anniversary celebration.  Everything seems to be going his way, right up until he spots a strange man on the steps of City Hall, a marked criminal with a shadowed past who's been haunting Sam's dreams for weeks.  Dean Winchester seems to stand against everything Sam's been working his entire life towards, so why is Sam so drawn to him, and what, if anything, does he have to do with Sam's mentors' insistence that Sam himself is destined to put an end to the apocalypse?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ringwall

Even for as late as it was, the city was quiet. 

Sam had heard stories about the early days, back when the croat was still rampant, even remembered some of it himself: the screams in the middle of the night, the sounds of heavy gunfire, first right outside the window by his bed, then off in the distance after the wall had been completed. But that had been years ago now, at the beginning of the war, and these days the only thing that disturbed your sleep in Perdition was the sounds the rats made scurrying in the walls. 

Not even rats disturbed this quiet. Sam couldn't even hear his own footfalls on the broken concrete of the sidewalk. The fog that lay thick over Perdition muted the rush of his breath, kept him from seeing even as far as the next building down the street. 

He knew he shouldn't have worked so late. But the twentieth anniversary celebration required a lot of planning and, as the Mayor's chief assistant, it was up to Sam to make sure the whole thing went off without a hitch. 

The official curfew had been lifted a few years ago, not long after Sam's 18th birthday. One of his very first tasks in the Mayor's office had been to write up the formal announcement of its repeal. Most citizens of Perdition still kept inside after sundown though, the few exceptions being the members of the Guard and any bands of roamers visiting the city. Sam thought he could smell the roamers' fires as he walked back to his apartment, the smoke blending in with the fog, making it hard to pull in a breath. He didn't dare approach. The roamers threw a good party during the day, frequently announcing their arrival with grand parades and bazaars down Main Street, but they were fiercely territorial. Everyone heard the stories of what the roamers did to those who invaded their haphazard little camps. Disturbing a roamer was a good way to lose an ear or a finger -- or much, much worse. Sam liked to keep his various bits in order, thank you very much. 

Strange, he didn't remember them ever camping so close to Main Street before. It must've been the fog, they were counting on it to mask their location from the Guard. 

Maybe they were even making the fog. If they screwed up his anniversary plans, so help him. . . .

Sam kept to the middle of Main Street out of habit. The buildings here were widely enough spaced to let the moonlight filter down most nights. The city hadn't bothered to try to light the streetlights in ages; the Guard had their own ways of seeing in the dark. It was said that on a moonless night, if you looked closely enough, you could see the members of the graceling corps blinking in the dark. 

Sam looked up to see if it was a moonless night or not, but he couldn't make out anything through the fog. In the old mystery novels at the library, this would be called a "pea souper". If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he was back in old London Town, hunting Jack the Ripper. 

Or, more likely, being hunted. 

An assistant to the Mayor, even the top assistant to the Mayor, didn't make enough money to afford an apartment off the city's main drag, and eventually Sam had to veer off down one of the dark alleyways that led away from the city center. He moved slowly at first, feeling his way along with his feet, trying to keep from stepping on anything -- rats, mostly, either the animal sort or the children who haunted the dark, too foolish or stubborn or just damn unfortunate to have moved into Billy's. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but they stubbornly refused, and soon apprehension beat out caution and he stepped up his pace, rodents and wretches be damned. 

Maybe he'd put on a record when he got home. He'd managed to get his hands on an old Beatles album last week and found it strangely comforting, like he was listening to songs he'd always known but had forgotten. He could use a bit of that comfort just about now. He was almost starting to hear things, like faint footsteps barrelling down the alleyway at him. The fog was thicker here, and what little light followed him into the alley from Main Street just transformed it into a wall of grey that swirled faintly before his eyes, twisting the shadows until they almost looked like people, like a man in a long coat, running straight at him.

"For fucksake, kid, _move!_ " Sam had just enough time to freeze in terror before the shape, a few inches shorter than Sam but aggressively built, swerved around him from the left, his arm clipping Sam's elbow as he went past. Sam assumed the figure was male, at least, from the broadness of his shoulders and the way the dark jacket hung on his frame, not to mention the gruff depth of his voice. Sam stayed rooted where he was, expecting the man to continue running past, hopefully forgetting about Sam entirely as he did, but instead he came back, eyes just barely visible through the opening of his balaclava. "What are you, an idiot?" he barked, grabbing for Sam's arm. Sam dodged back, huffing out a sharp, terrified breath. 

"The curfew's been revoked," Sam said, and he realized a few moments later that it had to be one of the dumbest things to ever come out of his mouth. "I'm allowed to be out here." 

Even with only a thin strip of his face visible, Sam could still see the bemused expression in the man's eyes. 

"Yeah, that's nice." He grabbed for Sam's arm again. "I'm sure they'll make sure to include that on your tombstone." 

"What?" Sam shook his head, still dodging out of the man's reach. "There's no one else out here --" And once again there were footsteps, a lot more of them this time, from somewhere down the next street. Sam recognized the sound; he'd heard it regularly since he was small, after all. "The Guard can't do anything," he insisted. "I'm allowed to be here." 

The man rolled his eyes, and this time managed to latch on to Sam's arm. "Uh huh." He yanked hard, dragging Sam back along the alley the way he'd come, muttering curses under his breath. Sam was startled by the man's strength; since his last growth spurt, few people had managed to budge him when he didn't want to be moved. Heaven and Hell, few people would even try. But the man's grip was inexorable, and he managed to pull Sam several yards back down the alley before suddenly flinging him to the side and slamming up against him, forcing him back into an entryway Sam had entirely missed in the fog. Sam was about to offer up another protest when the man threw himself against him again, both arms wrapping around Sam's body now and dragging downward. 

Sam had just long enough to think _so this is being mugged_ before the fog over the man's shoulder suddenly lit up orange and the quiet of the night was shattered by a tremendous _BANG_. He threw his arms over his head and curled tighter into the man holding him down, feeling as though all the air had been sucked out of his lungs at once. 

The man started talking again, and though his ears were ringing with the blast, Sam thought he heard him say something about the armory. 

That wasn't right. Perdition's armory was on the other side of town, wasn't it? They'd've heard it go up, sure, maybe even seen it, but this was too close, too _present_. It couldn't have been more than a few blocks away. 

The man grabbed onto Sam's shoulders and he recoiled. "I didn't see anything. I don't know anything. Let me go, let me --" 

"Hey," the man was saying. "Hey, kid. Kid!" He shook Sam once, hard, his eyes wide as he tried to make eye contact. Sam breathed hard and tried not to stare back. This guy had just blown up a building. Sam didn't want him to think he could identify him, later, even with the balaclava. He just wanted to get home, listen to his music, and go to bed, but he could already hear the neighborhood waking up, the muttered questions of those living in the apartments above them, and here he was in the middle of it, the first terrorist attack on Perdition in more than four years, since the breakthrough on the Enochian warding back in 2000, and no one was going to sleep tonight -- 

Oh sweet Mike. This was going to completely ruin the anniversary plans. 

"Fuck," the man said, sounding disgusted, and Sam realized he actually said that bit out loud. "You're fine." He let Sam go and straightened, edging along the wall of the alcove to peer around the corner. The fog was still orange, though fainter now, reflecting and diffusing the light of the fire set by the explosion. "Distracted the Guard at least." 

"Who _are_ you?" Sam hissed, then immediately wanted to take it back. You didn't just ask a terrorist for his identity, was he stupid? He should start shouting, raise the alarm. _He's here! The terrorist is here, he threw me into this doorway just before the --_

Wait. The terrorist had saved his life. 

Said terrorist turned, lit up from behind in the eerie orange glow of the fog. "Who, me?" he asked. "You know who I am, Sammy." 

Sam frowned, trying to remember if he'd mentioned his name. He shook his head. Though he wore a mask, Sam could swear the man was grinning

"I'm the goddamn Angel of Mercy," the man said. "Now where the fuck are you?" 

*

Sam opened his eyes and stared up at the water stains on his ceiling. He blinked slowly, mind still swimming its way out of the dream's thick fog. He reached up to rub his eyes, then fumbled around to his left for his alarm clock, sending it jingling as he knocked it over on the nightstand before managing to wrap his fingers around it. There was enough light coming in from the window -- plenty of light, the Guard kept Perdition well lit even into the night, it helped the people feel safe -- to read the clock's face. 

Three AM. His third three AM this week. His third Angel of Mercy dream. If he didn't know better, he'd swear Perdition's very own folk hero was haunting him.

Sarah the intern was right. He needed a vacation. Just as soon as this damned anniversary was done with. He only had to survive one more week, how hard could that be? 

*

The wall on the south side of town stood solitary and forbidding, running through the middle of what had once upon a time been a large park, but was now home to mostly weeds and scrub, the ground too rocky -- and the neighborhood too poor -- for the government to bother bringing in the supplies needed to build it up into gardenland. The anti-critter wards along the wall's surface blended seamlessly in most places with the street kids' graffiti. Dean had been coming out here for years, since he was one of those street kids himself, and when he closed his eyes, he could picture the painting on the brick perfectly. He pressed his palm flat against one sigil in particular, a useless bastardization of an Enochian call to God, blended with a voodoo veve and what Dean was pretty sure was some sort of old band logo, from back in the days when bands did things like have logos and sell albums instead of just scrounging constantly for gigs. He could almost picture it in his head, stamped on the side of a cardboard sleeve, clutched in a large, grease-stained hand. 

That was all he had left of his father now: large hands and scuffed boots, and on the good days, the low, wordless rumble that must have been his voice. 

Dean had painted this here, back in his street kid days, trying to cement it in his head. When he couldn't get it to look right, he kept going, throwing in the veve and the sigil like he could ask the spirits and God himself to put the memories back. He'd been so angry then, at the angels and demons for destroying the world and taking his parents away from him, at his parents themselves for not trying harder to hang on to him and Sam. At himself for not being able to hang on to Sam, no matter how hard he tried. 

Hell. Most days he still was. 

The gangs must have liked it to have left it alone this long. Or hell, maybe they thought it was legit. Everyone knew you didn't fuck with the warding. 

Most folks didn't know it did fuck all when it really counted. 

A mile or so further down, the wall ran up against an old stripmall, a low brick beast of a building abandoned not long after the war had started, when folks started consolidating their towns, pulling back from the edges. Most places had been abandoned wholesale, all the signs, furniture, and goods left to looters and rot. It looked like a fire had taken this one down, gutting the interior and leaving thick black soot stains over all the open spaces where the doors and windows used to be. It'd been empty as long as Dean could remember, anyway, already home to a gaggle of street kids and angelpunks. It could have been paradise, if Dean had managed to bring Sam out here with him.

The kids had scooted by now, the whole group grown into a bunch of messed up adults, most of them joining the Guard and trying to work their way up to the Graceling Corps, or just roaming the streets, trying to scrounge and rob enough to afford the steep price of the grease that passed for non-gov grace. Never mind that even the good shit could burn the eyeballs right out of your skull if it went bad on you. That the best those who didn't get a steady supply from the Corps could look forward to was quietly burning out -- literally. Shit could peel your skin off, and usually did.

Word was the gov had their very own angel strapped down somewhere in the bowels of City Hall. Dean didn't know if it was true, but it sure as hell explained how they always managed to have a steady supply of some seriously heavy stuff. 

Grace in its pure form hit most people like a bottle of liquid plutonium. Dean wasn't sure what genius had decided to give chugging an angel's blood a shot, but whoever it was had tried it enough times to figure out that there were a rare bunch of people for whom it wasn't a death sentence, folks who actually metabolized the shit into their very own angelic super powers. There was no telling until you took a hit which type of person you'd be though, so said geniuses worked out a way to water the shit down, cut it with God knew what so it wouldn't melt your insides on contact even if you weren't one of the super-special chosen. 

When it was all ready, they foisted it on the street kids. If it hooked you, you were screwed, but if you had the spark, you could at least get a job out of it. Gracelings lined the whole perimeter these days, whether they liked it or not. 

Dean should know. He was almost one of them. 

He ran his fingers over the scarring that lined his right eye socket, skirting perilously close in some places to his eye. It still seemed to twinge some days, and fingering the scars had become a bad habit, an obvious tell that would screw him right over if he were still playing poker in the Guard barracks. He consciously forced his hand back down to his side as he walked through the empty reaches of the old stripmall. 

He didn't know why he still expected to find anyone here. The Guard had found it years ago, had cleared the place out with reckless, vicious abandon -- it'd been _fun_ , Dean had been able to feel it coming off them in waves, and it'd been the beginning of the end of his career in law enforcement -- and not even the angelpunks were dumb enough to come back in after what Dean was pretty sure would've been a massacre if it weren't for the continuing war. 

Humans didn't kill humans. There were too many other things out there willing to wipe them all out as it was. 

Of course, there were a lot of ways to fuck people up without ever getting close to killing them. 

Dean shook himself, forcing the memories back in and shoving his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching for his brow again. He shouldn't be lingering on these things. Jo was expecting him downtown. It was time to leave this past behind him again. 

Time to get respectable. 

*

Sam didn't know how he managed to recognize the guy. For Mike's sake, the man was wearing a _tie_. 

Sam would have walked right by him, not spared him even a second glance, but the man had a girl with him, a few years younger than Sam, maybe, and wearing a threadbare pair of jeans and an old, soft flannel shirt -- and the line of tattoos running all along her visible skin that marked her as a roamer, a rare sight around City Hall. As Sam trotted past them down the stairs, she said something that elicited a sharp bark of a laugh and a "Sure thing, kid," and Sam's head was filled with _fog_ and explosions and _Where the fuck are you?_ and he knew. 

He stopped on the stairs, turning to watch the man and the girl make their way up, and as though he sensed the attention, the man paused and half-turned in his direction, his right eyebrow quirking upwards. 

"Can I help you?" 

Sam could only stare for a moment, dumbfounded, then when the eyebrow went up just a fraction higher, shook his head. "Uh, no, sorry." He turned on his heel and started hurrying back down the stairs, shoving his hands into his pockets. Behind him, he heard the girl's voice rising in a question, though he couldn't make out the words, and the low grumble of the man's answer. 

Sam closed his eyes once he was past the crowd on the City Hall steps, trying to fix the man's face in his mind. Or rather what was on the man's face, the actual features having taken a sideline to the scarring around his right eye, healed to little more than shallow creases, but still sharply pink across the side of the man's brow and down over his temple towards his jaw. It'd been covered by the balaclava in Sam's dream, and Sam was surprised he hadn't had on some sort of hat or scarf to cover it today -- though he knew it wasn't allowed, especially not in a public building like City Hall. 

The scars were a brand, a mark deliberately placed to let the whole of Perdition know just what the man was: a deserter. 

*

"You get yourself a new boyfriend you haven't told me about?" Jo joked as Dean turned in place, watching the kid hurry off down the stairs, then stop at the bottom and just stand for several moments before continuing on. "Or is he just a new member of the 'Admire Dean From Afar' club?" 

"What?" Dean turned his head back towards her and caught the wicked little smirk stretching across her face. "Shut up." 

"It's okay," Jo said, patting his arm like she was his mother instead of his long distance sort-of foster sister. "You can tell me. I won't judge." 

"The fuck you won't," Dean said. "Did you -- I could've sworn I recognized him." 

Jo shrugged. "You lived in a walled town, Dean. I'd be more surprised if you _didn't_ recognize your fellow fine upstanding citizens." 

"Yeah." Dean rubbed at his scars, then bit his lower lip when he caught himself doing it. "Right." 

*

Sam wasn't in the habit of dreaming up random strangers that turned up in real life. He knew he could never be sure, what with the dream figure having been hidden under the balaclava and everything, but he could swear up and down that the man on the stairs at City Hall was the man who'd been stalking his dreams all week. 

The goddamn Angel of Mercy, if the dreams were to be believed. Which -- well, Sam honestly couldn't say if they could or not, any more. 

If the man _was_ the fabled Angel, he was remarkably well preserved. Sam knew for a fact the Angel had been in action for almost as long as Perdition had existed, and the man on the steps hadn't looked much older than his early to mid-twenties. It was probably a metaphor or something. Dreams operated in metaphor and obfuscation. Like the fog, which was virtually impossible at the top of a hill with only a few springs and wells for water sources, or the glowing eyes of the Graceling Corps, when everyone knew that a Graceling's eyes didn't _really_ glow in the dark. 

Well, everyone was pretty sure they knew, anyway. 

Angel or not, it'd be pretty easy to find out for sure. Computers were rare, but City Hall had a handful, and as the executive assistant to the mayor, Sam had access to one private enough that he wasn't likely to be interrupted using it. The city kept a database of all the local criminals, and after setting a few quick parameters: apparent age, sex, crime, Sam had the list narrowed down to just two people. 

Desertion almost never happened. The consequences were dire enough to deter even those who were drafted into service with the Guard. Perdition didn't have a death penalty and it didn't do exile -- casting a citizen out beyond the wall was considered the same as sending them to their death. So the worst offenders were marked, their crimes carved into their skin for the whole city to see, making them pariahs. Most people would rather do just about anything than be marked. 

It turned out to be next to impossible to identify the man based on the images on the computer screen. Sam's eyes just didn't want to process the jagged green lines into the shape of a recognizable face. Of the two possible candidates, though, one had had his right hand taken along with receiving the brand. He was probably caught in amongst a tribe of roamers; the file said he was accused of buying and distributing contraband. Which left Dean Winchester, approximate age 26 years. Joined the Guard at 18, AWOL at 22, caught almost immediately, marked and released on probationary terms, which required regular check-ins and meant -- there -- a current home address was on file. 

Sam told himself that was enough. He knew the guy's name, now, didn't have to keep thinking of him as "the guy" or "the Angel of Mercy". He knew his story, or enough of it to satisfy his curiosity. He could move on, banish the dreams and get back to the important business of arranging the anniversary festivities. If anything else happened in town, he could pass the word along to the Guard about "suspicious persons". They wouldn't ask many questions. The mayor's office had enough clout that folks tended to just do what they said. Sam determined to put the whole thing out of his mind and get back to his actual work. Growing up in the midst of a war had made Sam very good at putting things out of his mind. 

But by the end of the day, he'd made absolutely zero progress on the anniversary plans. He found himself back at the computer, looking Dean Winchester up all over again. He jotted down the home address -- opposite side of town from his own, though close enough to Billy's that Sam still knew the neighborhood -- and went to get his coat.

Apparently he was still curious, after all. 

* 

"Padre know you're raiding his stock?" Dean asked, stepping out onto the roof of the House. He squinted up at the overcast sky, sticking his hand out from under the rickety overhang Old Jim had helped them rig after Nance declared the House a non-smoking zone. It was just about to start raining, unless he missed his guess. At least it had waited until he and Jo got home from City Hall. 

Andy, leaning against the brick beside the roof access door, let out a little snort. "It's not a raid when you're the one who provided it in the first place." He waggled his eyebrows -- the left with three small ticks through it, shoplifting if Dean remembered correctly -- and offered the little rolled cigarette. "Toke?" 

Dean shook his head. "Nah, man. It's weird enough up here without any chemical help." 

Andy nodded, taking another hit of his own. "Hearing go well?" 

Dean let out a long sigh. "Not even a little. Best we got is an appeal to Mr. Head Judge in Charge." 

"Fuck." 

"Yeah." 

"How's Jo doing with that?" 

Dean shrugged. "How do you think? The family's hanging in, but none of them counted on it taking this long." 

"Fuck," Andy said again. He studied the end of his joint for a few minutes, eyes going a little glassy. "You should get home." 

"I am home." 

"Official home." 

"I'm not due for inspection for another month." Dean frowned. "Tell me you're not greasing again." 

Andy laughed. "I wish." He must've caught the look on Dean's face, because he sobered right up. "Seriously man, no way. I'm clean, you know that."

"Right. Then how's it you're giving me cryptic instructions in your spooky 'I know things' voice?" 

Andy flushed. "Acid flashback?" 

Dean studied him for several moments. He liked Andy, he really did, even after everything had gotten all creepy on them back in the day when he'd gone full mind control on the grease -- Dean didn't even know where he got that quality of blood without going to the g-men, but Andy was the guy who could get you what you wanted, even without being able to just order it out of whomever he pleased. "You'd tell me if you were on it again, right?" 

Andy nodded hard. "Swear to Mike." 

Dean snorted. "Might as well swear to God, himself, man. Ain't no one listening to us, any more." 

*

It rained on Sam the whole walk across town. A real rain, steady and cool and clear, not blood or mud or frogs, no thunder or tremendous hailstones or ungodly winds, so Sam simply pulled out his battered old umbrella and resigned himself to getting his feet wet. His route took him right by Billy's, and he gave the side of the old brick building an affectionate pat, making a mental note to stop by on his way home, maybe have tea with Sister Margaret. It'd been too long since he'd been home, and they'd love to hear about all the preparations for the anniversary. Even Dean Winchester would give them a good chuckle, claiming to be the Angel of Mercy and all. The first rumors had started when Sam was still a toddler, and Dean wouldn't have been any older than six or seven at the time. 

Sister Margaret would even understand the whole "he actually only said that bit in my dream" part. She'd always been interested in his dreams, especially since he'd been hired by the Mayor's office. 

The building Dean lived in was a couple blocks further out past Billy's, right by the wall. Right _in_ the wall, in fact, the thing had been erected in such a hurry at the start of the war that they hadn't been able to plan around all the existing buildings of the city, and any number of houses were pressed into service as watchtowers and guard posts. Dean's seemed to have managed to dodge that fate, though the wall ran right up along the back of the building. It was a rundown, ramshackle place, half the windows boarded up or taped over with duct tape, the facade moldy and scarred from years of hard weather. Most of the wall in this section had been thoroughly decorated by vandals, street rat kids leaving their mark on the world in the form of curse words and bastardized enochian. The house hadn't fared much better, though Sam at least recognized some of the symbols there to be protective sigils, the sort the angels had taught people in the early days of the war, before it got out that they were just as gung ho for the end of the world as the demons were. He felt a twinge deep in his stomach as he stepped up to the front door, but shook it off with a fortifying breath and trying the handle. The door was unlocked and slid open with the grinding sound of wood over a gritty floor. Sam grimaced and edged his way in. 

The front hall was dark, the only light coming from a struggling incandescent bulb at the far end, past the staircase. Sam could make out four doors along the hallway, two on either side of the front door and two at the back, under the bulb. Outside, the wind gusted against the brick with a faint whine, rattling the windows. The bulb dimmed and buzzed. 

Sam had never felt less like he was where he was supposed to be. 

Dean's address was for a fifth floor apartment, the top of the building. There was just one set of stairs rising in a straight line to the second floor and no sign of an elevator, though that didn't surprise Sam much. Few people had the money or the resources to keep an elevator in operation. He started up at a jog, eying the doors suspiciously as he went, half expecting them to burst open and spill rats or croats out into a swarm in the hallways. 

He didn't spot a single soul, not even a cockroach, the whole way up. 

On the fourth floor, just before he started on the last flight of stairs, the wind suddenly died, leaving the building starkly, eerily quiet. Sam froze as a puff of cool air wafted past him, carrying the sounds of giggling. 

Jesus. Dean didn't even have enough money to get a place that wasn't haunted. 

He took the last flight two at a time, arriving on the final landing winded and aching. His own apartment was only on the second floor, his office on the first. He kept pretty well in shape running errands around town, but it'd been a long time since he'd tackled quite that many stairs at once. He took a moment to compose himself, listening to the tap and rush of the rain on the roof -- even louder up here than he'd expected. 

Dean's apartment was at the far end of the hall, farthest from the top of the stairs. The light socket over the door was empty, but Sam could see the flickering glow of a light through the crack under the door. 

He was home, then. Sam wondered what he'd say when he answered. He wondered why he was here at all. He thought for more than a few moments about turning around and going back, stopping by Billy's for that visit with the sisters, just forgetting about Dean Winchester and his scars and the Angel of Mercy all together. 

He knocked. The door creeped open a few inches under the force of his hand, scraping over a thick coating of grit and granules as it went. Less a salt line, Sam thought, than a salt _field_. 

At least Dean wasn't a total idiot. 

The light came from an old fashioned hurricane lamp, sitting on a table opposite the door. Dean sat at the only chair at the table, his booted feet propped up on the corner by the lamp. A single, thin bed stretched from the table into the corner, and a door behind Dean seemed to lead into a combination bathroom and kitchen. Judging by the layout of the building, Sam would have guessed the apartment would be much bigger than just this long room, barely wide enough to fit the barest necessities for a civilized life. Dean looked up as Sam leaned his head in, looking bored. "'Bout time you got here," he said. "You get held up in traffic or something?"

"I," said Sam. "What?" 

Dean put his feet back on the floor and leaned his elbows on his knees. He was holding a knife, the blade long and curved, the hilt heavy with a thick, blunted end, suited perfectly for bludgeoning. Guard issue, for those who worked the wall by the city gates. Sam would have thought they'd've confiscated it when Dean was arrested for desertion. He wasn't sure why he was surprised that a man who'd flee the Guard would also be the sort to smuggle weapons out when he went. 

"I saw you, like, two days ago at City Hall," Dean said. "It really take that long to sort through all the two guys in town with one of these?" He tapped the brand around his eye with the tip of his knife. 

"How'd you even know I'd come looking for you?" 

"You kidding?" Dean said. "Most folks stare at me that long at least offer to buy me a drink." 

Sam felt himself flush. He'd been intending to ease himself into this conversation, but Dean had an air about him that pressed all of Sam's 'skip the small talk' buttons. "Who the fuck are you?" 

Dean's right brow quirked up, warping the scars strangely across his forehead. "Uh, shouldn't I be asking _you_ that?" 

Sam clenched his jaw, not wanting to admit he had a point. "Are you the Angel of Mercy?" 

Dean seemed genuinely surprised by that. "I may have been called that." 

Sam let out a soft growl of frustration. "You're not," he said. "The Angel of Mercy has been in operation since before this city was founded. Twenty-one years ago." 

Dean tilted his head, looking bemused and faintly impressed. "And how do you know that?" 

Sam straightened, crossing his arms. "Everyone knows that." 

Dean shook his head. "No. They don't." He pushed himself up out of the chair and paced past Sam, his hands behind his back. Sam twisted to watch him go -- and startled as he got a good look at the other side of the apartment. 

The place was so small, he saw, because part of it was actually _gone_ , sheared away off the side of the building by -- hell, it could have been any number of things over the years. A heavy curtain lay across the gap, insulating the apartment from the elements, and as Dean tugged it aside, Sam saw that while the walls and floor were broken off, the ceiling and roof continued out for several feet past where the curtain hung, sheltering the space from the rain. It was enough of an overhang that the wind would probably have to be blowing straight at the apartment for it to carry any water inside. Dean stood there for several moments, staring out through the hole, and Sam came up behind him. He was tall enough to see over Dean's shoulder without any difficulty.

"Not sure you'd've ever really seen this, before," Dean said, not looking back at Sam. "You work at City Hall, right? Not much reason for a civil servant to ever go out past the wall." 

Sam shook his head, for once at a loss for words. The wall was as tall as Dean's apartment building, and it circled the entirety of Perdition. It'd been completed extremely quickly in the early days of the war, when Sam was only a small child, and it was there, towering and impenetrable, in all of Sam's memories. Sam had assumed the wall would have incorporated the back of the buildings it intersected, but here it seemed as though it hit a good ten feet short, leaving the back end of the building hanging out into the world, unprotected. The wall was jam packed with sigils, the concrete mixed with large amounts of salt and silver -- as impregnable by the supernatural as any man-made structure could get, but the old apartment building had been left vulnerable, and here, Sam was looking at -- or through -- the result. 

"In books," he said finally. "And old magazines in the library. It's . . ." He trailed off, shaking his head again. 

"Yeah," Dean said, and if Sam could tear his eyes off the view, he was sure he'd see the man smiling. "It is." 

It was mostly trees. There was a stretch of empty plain lining the edge of the wall itself -- easier for the Guard to see what, if anything, was coming -- but past that, it was all trees, a sea of scraggly brown branches broken here and there by patches of deep green pines, sloping gently at first, then sharply down and away. Sam had known intellectually that Perdition was established at the top of a hill, but it was one thing to know that, and quite another to see it so clearly. He could see what he thought must be miles and miles even through the misty rain, trees and meadows with the occasional ruin of an old house, the long black lines of old roads. 

"Shouldn't more of it be . . ." Sam pursed his lips, trying to find the right words. ". . . On fire?" 

Dean snorted. "And it should be raining blood, right? Or locusts or something? World out there isn't that different from the one in here, kid. Mostly it's just a lot more open, with a lot less laws." 

Sam frowned. "You've been out there."

"A time or two." Dean handed Sam the curtain and lowered himself down, inching towards the edge of the floor. He pointed out a route along the rubble, and Sam was startled to see a fairly easy staircase take shape from what had looked before like random destruction. "All part of the job. Your government is pretty particular about who they let in. Some folks have to find, uh. Alternate routes." 

"You let people in through the _wall?_ " Sam was appalled. 

"Keyword: people." Dean grinned at Sam's discomfort. "You can't see it from here, but we've got sigils and salt lining the ground right in front of the building. Anyone can't get past those, they're not getting in. We're not idiots, kid." 

"I'm not a kid," Sam grumbled. "You could be putting the entire city in jeopardy, here, you know that, right? Some Angel of Mercy." 

"I'm not the one who's going to bring this city down," Dean said, getting back to his feet and taking the curtain back from Sam and letting it fall back into place. Sam felt strangely colder without the view. "How do you know about the Angel of Mercy?" 

"I told you," Sam said. "Everyone knows." 

"You said 'twenty-one years'." Dean crossed his arms over his chest. "That's pretty damn specific. Most people, you ask 'em how long the Angel's been around, they'll say 'forever', or at best guess 'around twenty years'. Guy's a myth, those aren't really supposed to have a lot of _facts_ around them."

"So are real angels," Sam said. "And they've got plenty of _facts_." Dean just kept looking at him, and Sam sighed. "The Angel of Mercy dropped off his first war orphan at Saint Abilius's Children's Home in November, 1984." 

Dean peered at him, his expression oddly blank. "You were there." 

"Yeah," Sam said. He didn't elaborate. 

Dean nodded, just a jerk of the chin up and then down again. "Well, then." He turned away, heading back towards the table, but stopped, his hands twitching a little at his sides. Sam braced himself without really knowing what he expected to happen. "You grew up at the Home?" 

"Till I was eighteen. We call it Billy's." 

"Billy's." Dean half-turned, talking to Sam over his shoulder. "How do you grow up like that and do what you do, now?" 

Sam crossed his arms, feeling bizarrely defensive. He didn't have to prove anything to this guy. "I was recruited. The Mayor came to Billy's and said he wanted to find the next up and comers, kids who really wanted to go places --" 

"Jesus, kid." Dean put up a hand to cut Sam off. "I'm not asking about the interview." 

Sam scowled. "You know what? Fuck this. I don't need to stand here and listen to you go off on some rant about the government. You're a damned deserter, you're probably a smuggler, and you're _sitting_ on a hole in Perdition's only line of defense like it's the portal to Narnia or something." 

"The fuck is Narnia?" 

Sam threw up his hands. "That's it. I'm done. I don't even know why I came here in the first place." He turned to the door, but Dean somehow beat him to it, blocking his way with the full force of what Sam realized would have been extensive Guard training. That didn't just go away when they put the brand on your head. "Move." 

Dean stared up at him, his shoulders set and his feet planted, but he didn't look angry or dismissive any more. "You seriously don't know, do you?" His eyes flicked over Sam's face, and his stance relaxed incrementally. "You have no idea the shit that's really going down around here." 

Sam had had enough. He might not have professional training, but growing up at Billy's hadn't exactly been a cakewalk. He'd gotten into -- and won -- his share of fights on the playground growing up, and he knew a thing or two about getting someone out of his way. He shouldered Dean to the side, using the full force of his height, realizing even as he opened the door that it was too easy, that if Dean wanted to make him stay, he'd never have gotten around him that fast. 

"You wanna know the truth," Dean said, his voice following Sam out into the hallway, though he didn't step past the salt line in his own doorway. "Head to the lumber yard tomorrow. An hour after sunset." 

Sam turned. "What's in the lumber yard?" 

Dean shrugged. "Show up -- alone -- and you might just find out." 

He swung the door closed, and Sam was left standing alone in the dark of the hallway, the whispers of ghost laughter his only company.

*

Dean listened to the kid make his way down the stairs, following his progress by the sound of Joey and Susie -- not their real names, but the two little ghosts hadn't exactly decided to provide Dean with their full biographies -- chasing him. He pressed his forehead to the chipped paint on the door. 

"What the fuck are you doing, Winchester?" 

No one answered, of course. He shivered slightly. This building was always too damned empty. 

He didn't know why the kid had him so interested. Maybe it was Andy's cryptic little 'flashback', but he didn't really think so. If he'd really been at the Home -- Billy's -- all those years ago, though, then maybe --

Dean had given up on keeping track of Sammy years ago. Had given up on relocating him sometime after that. But part of him kept hoping. It was what had kept him in Perdition before the Guard, what kept him from running properly when he deserted. He told himself that he stayed for the kids, or to help people like Jo get back to their families, but what it really came down to was Sammy. 

It was always Sammy. 

*

Sam wasn't sure how someone could really understand the word 'bustle' without having met Sister Margaret. She ruled the kitchen at Billy's with a bright smile and an iron ladle. Even making tea -- Sam hated tea, but he knew better than to ever turn down a cup when Sister Margaret wielded the pot -- she seemed to be in at least three different places at once, arranging cookies on a plate, refilling the sugar bowl, and measuring the tea leaves in almost a single motion. Sam sat silent in the midst of the giant, institutional kitchen, leaning his elbows on the stainless steel counter top as he watched her go. He'd learned on his first visit back after moving out not to bother asking if he could help. The other sisters saw it as a mark of good breeding, a sign of their hard work that he was so polite and helpful. Sister Margaret got insulted. 

"It's so nice of you to come back and see me," she said, rinsing the teapot in boiling water before adding the leaves. "None of you children ever come back often enough. Makes me worry we'll be forgotten." 

Sam snorted. "Tom comes back all the time. Sister Janet says he's here every weekend." 

"None of you children I _want_ to come back ever come back often enough." 

Sam laughed, reaching over to steal a cookie. She shot him a look, but didn't bat his hand away. "You know, you shouldn't play favorites like that. I thought a mother was supposed to love all her kids unconditionally." 

"And if I was a mother, I might just do that," the sister said. "Now what on earth are you doing out on a soggy day like this? That mayor of ours isn't making you work so late, is he?" 

Sam shook his head. "No, ma'am. I was actually, uh. Just following up on a personal lead." 

"Mmhm," the sister hummed, her brows going up inquisitively. 

"I don't want to bore you with the details." 

"Mmhm." The brows dropped again, and she his gaze steadily as she poured out the tea. It was astounding how much information she could pack into two not-quite-syllables. 

"Really," Sam said. "It's nothing." 

"If it was nothing, you wouldn't be sitting in my kitchen right now, dripping all over my nice floor." 

Sam held back his sigh. "I was in the neighborhood. I just thought it'd be nice to stop by and talk." 

"Mmhm." 

"Fine." Sam spooned a few mounds of sugar into his cup and stirred it, watching as the dark shapes of the granules chased the spoon around before slowly dissolving away. "Do you know a guy named Dean Winchester?" 

He looked up in time to catch the slight tensing of Sister Margaret's back, though her face remained impassive. "Might do," she said. "Sounds familiar. He was that fellow that left the Guard a few years back, right?" 

"Yeah. He lives around here, a couple blocks over, by the wall." 

"Hmm," the sister hummed again, her tone this time disapproving. Well, Sam hadn't exactly expected Dean to be Mister Popular. 

"He says he's the Angel of Mercy." 

The sister laughed at that, a single, cheerful cackle. "Does he? I suppose that's why he deserted, then. It's a busy job, that." 

Sam smiled, though he didn't share her humor. He sipped delicately at his tea, wishing the cups didn't look quite so small in his large hands. "Yeah. He's not, though, right?" 

"Not the Angel?" The sister shook her head. "Well, I don't know, Sam. We've never exactly gotten a really good look." 

"But he's my age. Or just about. There's no way he could have. . . ." Sam trailed off with a shrug, a hand waving around his chest. "Could he?" 

Sister Margaret sobered a bit at that, relaxing into a seat across the counter from Sam. "I was the first one at the door that night, you know," she said. She lifted her cup to her mouth and blew across the surface of her tea, but didn't take a sip. "Well, of course you know, we've told you the story enough times." 

"I was in a box," Sam said. "Wrapped up in a ragged old blanket." 

"Filthy," the sister said with a nod. "Absolutely disgusting. We didn't know how you'd survived. You were terribly sick for ages, even after we got you all cleaned up. We honestly weren't sure you were going to make it." 

"But there was a note." 

"As dirty and rumpled as you were. Torn and tear stained. We would have kept it for you, but it practically fell apart when we were cleaning out the box." 

"What did it say?" 

"Sam, you know this." 

"I want to hear it," Sam said. "What did it say?" 

"It said 'angels are watching over you'." The sister reached across for Sam's hand, gripping his fingers tight. "And they were. You'd never have made it if they weren't." 

Sam shook his head, pulling his hand away. "But angels are terrible. They kill people." 

"The bastard creatures out there beyond the wall are, yes." The sister let out a low breath and straightened up, lifting her tea again. "There's something about that night I've never told you, Sam." 

Sam frowned. "What?" 

"When I first opened the door, I caught sight of something moving down at the front gate, just out of the corner of my eye. It was too dark to make it out, and I'd've sworn it was just a stray, and anyway, all our attention went right to you, you were kicking up quite a fuss out there, demanding as always to be seen and heard. But when I looked up again I saw someone standing in the alleyway across the street." 

"The Angel?" Sam asked. 

Sister Margaret made no move to answer, not a nod or a shake of the head or a shrug. "He was tall," she said. "A full grown man. It was cloudy that night, no moon, but at the time the war still sent flashes up against the clouds, like lightning. He had dark hair and wore an old coat, and when the light hit just right, for just a moment." She paused to take a deep breath, then firmly met Sam's eyes. "He had wings." 

Sam didn't know what to say. As far as he knew, Sister Margaret had never lied to him, and he saw no reason for her to be doing it now. 

"You were sent to us, Sam. You were brought through storm and fire to the one place you would be safe because you have a great purpose in this world, and I think it's time you knew that." 

"What --" Sam swallowed, his mouth gone dry. "What do you think that is?" 

"You're going to end this war. You're going to end the Apocalypse." 

Sam stared, but Sister Margaret's gaze never wavered. A thousand questions rushed through his head, not the least of which was "what have you been putting in your tea?" What came out, though, was "I've been having these dreams." 

Sister Margaret sat forward, her hands coming out to grip Sam's, her eyes almost fever bright. When she looked at him like that, it was the strangest thing, but Sam knew beyond a doubt he could do anything. 

Even stop the end of the world. 

*

Dean was waiting for Sam at the edge of the lumber yard, clear across Perdition from his apartment and even a fair hike from Sam's side of town, nearer City Hall. Being a walled city meant Perdition had to be pretty damn self-sufficient, so many edges of the town were given over to agriculture and raw materials processing, of which the lumber yard was the largest example. It sat flush up against the wall and even boasted its own gate, a massive, highly warded thing made in the style of old garage doors, through which timber from the woods surrounding Perdition would be shipped. 

The lumber yard was central to Perdition's economy, employing a large chunk of both the skilled and unskilled labor. Sam really hoped Dean wasn't expecting him to help him blow it up. Sister Margaret insisted Sam's dreams were to be believed, and as literally as possible, and Sam wasn't looking forward to finding out what that explosion was going to be. 

"You showed," Dean said, inclining his head as Sam walked up. 

"Don't be too impressed," Sam answered. "I'm considering turning you in." 

Dean huffed a laugh. "For what? Loitering?" 

"Shouldn't you be wearing a, uh. . . ." Sam gestured vaguely at his own head. Dean snorted. 

"First lesson in insurgency," he said. "A guy standing around in the dark gets a whole lot more suspicious when he's wearing a ski mask." 

"So you admit you're an insurgent?" 

"I admit the authorities don't always approve of what I do." 

"So talk, then. What are you planning to do, here?" 

Dean smiled a little, twisting to look up at the fence next to him. "Here? Nothing." 

"Then why --" 

"We weren't sure you wouldn't try to turn me in." 

"For what?" Sam asked, sounding bitchy even to himself. "Loitering?" Then he blinked. "Wait, _we?_ "

"What?" Dean asked. "You thought I was some kind of lone vigilante?"

"Uh," Sam said. "Yeah." 

Dean rolled his eyes. "Come on, I'll introduce you to my partner in crime." He started to turn, then paused and looked back. "I'm not saying that literally, by the way." He tucked his hands into his pockets, gesturing Sam to follow with a tilt of his head before leading the way along the lumber yard's perimeter fence to the back corner, where the blond roamer Sam saw him with at City Hall waited with a cargo bike loaded up with old military issue duffel bags in a lumpy mass. Sam tried to work out what might be in them by the shape of the lumps -- cylindrical, for the most part, hard and regular shapes. Large munitions, maybe. 

If this was what Sister Margaret meant when she said he'd save the world, he was so screwed. 

"That him?" the woman asked, inclining her chin at Sam, her arms folded over her chest. 

"That's him," Dean confirmed. "Kid, this is Jo. Jo, this is. . . . Fuck, kid, the hell is your name?" 

Sam paused before answering. He wasn't sure he wanted Dean to know his real name. "West," he said, offering up the last name the nuns had given him when he first arrived at Billy's. By the tilt of Dean's eyebrow, Sam guessed he hadn't missed the hesitation. Heaven and Hell, he'd almost swear the man looked _disappointed_. 

"West," Dean repeated. "Okay. Jo, this is West." 

"You really think this is a good idea?" Jo asked. She'd barely looked at Sam. 

"Kid wants to help people. Ain't that right, Westie?"

Sam flinched at the impromptu nickname. That was even worse than "kid". 

"What if he decides to turn you in?" 

Dean held eye contact with Sam, intense enough to make him squirm. "Then that would really suck for me." 

*

The kid looked like an asshole with the blindfold on. Since the blindfold was basically Dean's ski mask -- and how had the kid known Dean used a ski mask? -- pulled over his head the wrong way, pretty much anyone would have looked like an idiot, so Dean tried not to hold it against him. 

"Alright," he said, as Jo pulled up beside the House entrance. "We're here." 

The kid -- West, Dean supposed, though the name didn't suit him at all -- turned his face towards Dean's voice. He'd kept his hands neatly folded in his lap the whole ride, never once reaching up to futz with the blindfold. Dean figured he must be at least counting turns. So had Jo, he guessed. The cargo bike wasn't easy with two passengers and the load they were carrying, but she'd still taken the long way around. 

"Can I take this thing off now?" 

"Sure," Dean said, hopping off the bike and waiting to see if the kid needed a hand down. 

West pulled the hood off, blinking as he adjusted to even the dim light of the alleyway. 

"You're going to blow up a dumpster?" 

Jo shot Dean a look. _You recruited this asshole._ Dean sent one back. _Shut up._

"You gotta do something about that obsession you have with explosions," he told the kid. "Someone's bound to get the wrong idea." 

*

Dean lifted the dumpster lid. Sam braced himself for a waft of putrid air that never came, then opened his eyes to see the roamer girl -- Jo -- scaling up and over the lip like a monkey. Dean gestured for Sam to follow. Sam shook his head, and Dean rolled his eyes. 

"Dude. You just saw Jo go in. You know it's not gross in there." 

"She's a roamer," Sam said. 

Dean scowled. "So?"

"So she could be into all kinds of weird stuff." 

Dean stared at Sam, his face blank, for what seemed like a short eternity. He still held the lid open. And it still didn't smell funny. In fact, it smelled like -- 

"Aw man!" Dean said. "They're makin' pie!" He grabbed onto the side of the dumpster, and in a move Sam couldn't quite follow, managed to swing himself up and over into the thing without letting the lid close on top of him. "You coming or what?" 

Sam glanced around the alley, resisting the urge to clasp his hands indecisively. The mayor had taught him what a bad habit that was, that he should always stand firm and not be afraid to take risks. 

"Yeah, alright." Sam stepped up and pulled himself in, nowhere near as gracefully as Jo or Dean had. He half hoped he'd manage to kick Dean in the head. 

The dumpster was empty, save for some old cardboard and a few foam matts on the floor, and it was dark even before Dean closed the lid. Then the lid came down, and Sam couldn't see a single blessed thing. 

* 

Dean slid the interior door open as soon as he was sure West had the time to let the interior of the dumpster hit home. 

Not everything was how it looked on the outside. 

Jo'd already gone in while West was still going all shrieky over the whole dumpster-dive thing, so Dean knew he wouldn't need to bother with the knocks or the password or anything. It was handy -- meant West couldn't come find this place with a bunch of civil cronies and sneak them in past security -- but also a disappointment. Dean _liked_ the knocks and the passwords. Made everything feel fancy, like a proper underground amy. Like maybe they could actually fight down the central machine that was Perdition. 

Which was exactly why West was there in the first place. Dean had been hoping to find an in to City Hall for ages, and West was just the man for it -- assuming he wasn't just playing along with Dean's whole eye-opening shtick. He didn't think he was. That kind of innocence wasn't easy to fake. 

The inside door on the dumpster led right through the wall of the building it sat up against. The hole had been blasted through early on in the war, sometime before Dean himself had even made it to Perdition -- back before Perdition was Perdition, even -- and it made a perfect back entrance to an otherwise secure building. The hole opened into an old storage room, complete with rusted old wheeled carts, a mud sink, a battered old desk and a walk-in cooler. Jo waited inside with Andy and Old Jim. Dean smelled baking apples -- Nance's pie. She always had the best timing with those things .

It was coming home. 

West straightened up beside him -- Dean had to duck to get through the entry hole, but West practically had to bend double -- and gawped. Dean grinned and spread his arms wide. 

"Welcome to Mercy House." 

* 

"So wait," Sam said, as he helped Dean unload the first of the duffels filled with canned food, it turned out, not munitions. "Did you name the orphanage after yourself, or did you name yourself after the orphanage?" 

Dean shrugged, tossing a can of tomatoes from one hand to the other. "They kinda both happened at once, dude. I set up shop here early on, and the kids who didn't want to go to the Home -- Billy's, I guess -- started hanging here, too. I was the one finding 'em in the streets and pointing 'em along, and this was my house, so we both got the same name."

"Yeah, okay," Sam said. "But, I mean, how? You're not actually an angel, or you'd never've been able to work the Guard. You'd've had to have been, what, five? Six? When all this got started. Who showed _you_ how to do it?" 

"Who says anyone did?" Dean started unpacking the cans faster, lining them up on the shelves haphazardly. "I survived long enough to figure it out myself." 

"But _how?_ " 

Dean slammed the last can home. "Just drop it, okay? I'm not the one you're supposed to understand, here." 

"You mean all this is?" Sam asked, gesturing to the storeroom at large. "An orphanage run by tramps and thieves?" 

"A _home_ ," Dean said, his every defence apparently raised. "For tramps, yeah, and thieves and orphans and soldiers and anyone else your government would rather didn't exist. We're the scraps, West, picked up every now and then when the mayor decides we have use, then discarded when we get all broken and scarred." 

Sam scoffed. "That's why you're blowing up buildings? Because you didn't get your pension when you deserted?" 

He didn't even see Dean move. One minute, he was at the shelf full of cans, the next he had Sam's back slammed against the wall, Sam's collar fisted in his hand. 

"Don't talk about things you don't know about." Sam, still wincing from the blow, could only nod. Dean let him go. "And who the fuck says I'm going around blowing up buildings?" He seemed actually baffled by this idea. He shook his head before Sam could answer and turned to stalk out of the room, pausing in the doorway without looking back. "Try talking to some of these guys, if you can avoid doing it out your ass. I'm gonna go get me some pie." 

*

Nance made the most amazing pies. Dean wasn't sure how she managed it -- it wasn't as though the food runs ever brought in fresh spices, much less produce. She must've had an incredible deal going with Andy to get her hands on the supplies, because what came out of her oven was the most mouthwatering thing Dean had ever eaten. 

Though, he supposed, he didn't exactly have a lot to compare it to. Even the Guard, the street kids' so called "path out of poverty", subsisted mostly on dried rations and canned meat. Pampered little West would probably find Nance's pies "subpar at best". 

"Alright," Nance said, sliding onto the bench next to Dean and setting a bottle of her nastily potent potato vodka between them (she was a magician with an oven, less so with a still). "Spill." 

Dean grunted, leaning back to grab a couple glasses from the shelf behind them. They were clean, but the water always left spots. West would probably refuse to use them on principle. 

"Dean," Nance said, snapping her fingers at the edge of his vision. She wasn't much older than he was, maybe in her mid- to late thirties, and the war had not been kind to her. Her hands and arms were scarred -- mostly marks for theft and vagrancy, wouldn't Westie-Boy love _that_ \-- and her hair had gone grey in thin streaks around the crown, though it was light enough not to always be obvious. She'd arrived in Perdition about the same time Dean had, though they hadn't met until Mercy House was already a good dozen kids strong. 

She hadn't taught him to survive. She'd helped, but he'd done most of it on his own. 

Hadn't he? 

"You ever coming back down to Earth, boy?" Nance asked. Dean blinked. When had she poured the vodka? "Damn, I haven't seen you this tied up in knots since you left the Guard. Must be some new kid." 

"He works for the Mayor," Dean said. 

"I heard," said Nance. 

"That's it? That's all you've got to say? You heard?" 

Nance shrugged. "You've always been a good judge of character, Dean. I'm sure he won't rat us out." 

"Really." Dean downed his drink in one go and reached for the bottle. "I'm not." 

"You must've seen something in him." 

Dean let out a low breath. "I did. I thought -- I dunno what it is, but there was _something_ \-- but I'm wrong. He's not. He's just another g-man." 

Nance pulled a flask from her pocket, weighing it thoughtfully in her hand. "Try him with this." 

Dean frowned. "What? Nance --" 

"You wanna know if he's too far in the government's pocket, that's how to do it. If he's clean, maybe he can be convinced." 

"And if he's not?" 

"We get the padre." 

* 

"Huh." 

Sam looked up from where he was still stacking cans. Jo the roamer stood in the doorway Sam assumed lead to the rest of the house, leaning against the doorjam. 

"Surprised I haven't ratted you out, yet?" 

Jo shrugged. "Kinda. More surprised Dean didn't drag you off to try some of Nance's pie." 

Sam shook his head. "I figured that was code for something." 

"Not yet." Jo came over to look at the shelf Sam was working. "What're you doing in here?" 

"Dean told me to try talking to some of the residents." 

Jo looked around. "Which you took to mean 'hide in the storage room'?" 

Sam felt his cheeks heat up. "Apparently." He put the last can from the bag -- lentil soup, somehow Dean didn't seem like a lentil soup guy -- on the shelf and turned to face her. "So what's your story?" 

"Excuse me?" 

"Well, the boss told me to talk to the residents, sooooo." 

"So you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not a Mercy Houser." 

"Then why are you here?" 

She shrugged. "Stuck around last time my parents shipped out to help with a few things. Got stranded." 

Sam nodded. He'd heard stories about roamers leaving strays. They weren't well known as a warm and fuzzy bunch of people. "Ditched you, huh?" 

"No!" She sounded honestly offended. "They're outside. Can't get visas to come in, some new policy. Dean's helping me petition you people to let 'em in." 

Sam frowned. "I haven't heard of any new roamer policy. And anyway, can't Dean just --" He waved a hand in the air, like he was performing a magic trick. "-- sneak them in?" 

"Through the wall? Dunno if you noticed, West, but that apartment is official record. Only folks go in and out through that hole are state sanctioned." 

Sam frowned. That both did and didn't make sense, something he was finding more and more common the longer he hung around Dean and his friends. "But that would mean --" 

"Government sponsored illegal immigration." Jo walked over to the walk-in cooler, came out with a couple brown, lableless bottles and offered one to Sam. He took a whiff before sipping, identified it as a local brew, the kind you could buy in the market most mornings. It burned a little harder than usual going down. Sam guessed it'd gone a little off; they probably didn't get many chances to go beer shopping at the market. 

"To the real Perdition," Jo said, holding up her beer in a toast. For the first time, she was smiling at Sam. "May it get what it _so_ richly deserves." 

"Uh." Sam lifted his bottle in return. "Yeah. Sure." 

A crash sounded from somewhere past the doorway into the rest of the house. Jo jumped, then shoved her beer into Sam's hand, making a beeline for the door. A bunch of people started yelling in the distance, and Sam shifted his weight, torn between going to see what was going on and ducking back out through the dumpster and pretending the night never happened. He had no idea if he'd be welcome helping out with . . . whatever this was. 

He wasn't used to not being welcome places. 

The voices quieted down. Sam shifted his weight again, this time in the direction of the front -- could that really be their _front_? -- door. He looked around for somewhere to put the beers. 

Then Dean came barrelling in from the doorway, his face pale and desperately angry, grabbed Sam by the front of his shirt (the beers spilled over both of them before Sam lost his grip and let them crash to the floor), and slammed him up against the shelf. 

"What the _fuck_ did you give Andy?!" 

* 

West stared down at Andy, sprawled across the beaten up, patched old couch in the common room, the same way he'd stared at Dean in the storage room when he first grabbed him. 

Dean was really starting to believe the kid had no idea what was going on. 

"What --" West swallowed, brushing at the spilled beer on his shirt as though he could wipe it off. "What's wrong with him?" 

Andy jerked on the couch again, his hand fisting in the cushions on the back as he hissed through his teeth. He hadn't had another full blown seizure, yet, but Dean knew it was only a matter of time. 

"OD," Jo said softly behind him. She'd been the one to pull Dean off the kid in the storage room. Seemed West did fine with a holy water beer, which meant he wasn't a total government stooge, yet. She'd also reminded Dean that he was the one who brought West in in the first place. 

Dean hated it when Jo had a point. Much less when she had two of them. 

"On _what?_ " West asked. He was keeping his distance -- wisely, Dean allowed -- and still pawing at his shirt. Dean caught Nance's eye across Andy's prone form and tilted his head. Nance, bless her, had already pulled the dishtowel out of her back pocket to offer to the kid. 

"Blood," Dean said. 

West took the dishtowel with a nod and started rubbing at his shirt with it instead of his hand. It didn't seem to make much of a difference. "He's a greaser?" 

"Was," Dean said. He had trouble getting the word out through his clenched teeth. "This is more than just a batch of street grease, though." 

West gave him some sort of confused puppy look that somehow both simultaneously made Dean want to pat him and pissed him off further. "What do you. . . ?" He trailed off as Andy's eyes cracked open. 

The whites glowed. 

"He's on _grace_ ," West breathed. "You've got gracelings here?" 

Dean shook his head, crouching down next to the couch as Andy started to convulse again, wrapping a loose arm over his chest to keep him from falling off the cushions. "No. We don't." 

"No, of course not." West shook his head. He was still a few steps behind, but Dean could see him working to catch up. "Gracelings all get housing stipends." His eyes went wide. "Dude, no way would I have brought grace in here. I don't even have the clearance to go near the stuff!" 

"Andy couldn't afford the street prices on something this pure," Jo said softly. "Government's the only source." 

Dean flinched as Andy slammed up against his arm, his back arching, his eyes wide open and bright, now. 

Well. At least they weren't on fire. 

"You honestly telling me you didn't bring this shit into my house?" he asked, breaking Andy's back-lit gaze to look back at West. Kid was wringing the dishtowel, now. 

"Do you want to search me?" West shot back. "I wouldn't carry that shit around, what if I dropped it? Sweet Mike." 

Dean flicked his gaze over to Jo, who shrugged. He looked up at Old Jim. "Padre?"

Jim shook his head. "Boy's been off all day. Been twitchy since before that. He swore he wasn't using again." 

Dean nodded, looking back down at Andy. The convulsions were dying down again, and his hands were starting to move with more intent, fingers slipping and catching against the buttons on Dean's shirt. "Yeah. He told me, too." He'd really wanted to believe Andy's flashback story. Andy was the great success story, greaser gone clean. "What about the pot? Could it be . . . tainted or something?" 

"He's _smoking_ blood?" West asked. Dean kind of wanted to smack him. 

Old Jim shook his head. "I don't think so, Dean." 

Andy's hand made contact with Dean's shirt again, this time finding purchase. Dean looked down and caught his eye. "It's okay, kid, just relax, it'll all be okay." 

Andy shook his head. "Dean." His voice developed the echoing undertone that had always accompanied his mind control commands when he'd hit bottom last time. " _Sam._ " 

Dean yanked himself away and made it to his feet. He felt sick, the bile actually backing up in his throat. "I've had enough of this," he said. "We've got to cut this shit out at the source." 

" _How?_ " Jo asked. 

"Actually," West said. He was staring down at Andy with an expression Dean couldn't read, though the intensity of it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He looked up and caught Dean's eye, and it was as though the air had been sucked out of the room. "I think I can help with that." 

*

Dean made Sam wait until the worst of Andy's seizures had passed, until they got him settled into his room upstairs (the Mercy House had an upstairs, Sam wasn't sure why, but for some reason this surprised him). Then he led Sam and Jo into what he called his office. Sam assumed it was a joke until he actually saw the space, which did in fact look startlingly like an actual office, complete with a desk and a haphazard stack of papers bearing the official seal of Perdition. 

"Lucy and Mike," Sam swore. "You're a _lawyer?_ " 

"Bite your tongue," Dean said. 

"He's more of a social worker," Jo offered. She didn't seem fazed in the least by the glare Dean shot her way. "What? That's what Uncle Bobby calls you." 

"Uncle Bobby can call me anything he damn well pleases. The new guy doesn't need to hear about it." 

Sam sighed, reaching back to close the door. He didn't even have to stretch, though he was practically standing on top of the desk. Dean's office was tiny. "Look," he said. "It seems to me we all have a choice, here." 

Dean, clearly not used to anyone else doing the gruff, ordering around voice, looked up sharply from the rolls of paper he was sifting through. "Yeah, Westie? And what choice is that?" 

Sam straightened, consciously rolling his shoulders back and crossing his arms, making full use of his height for the first time -- well, since the playground at Billy's. "We have to decide whether or not we're going to trust each other." 

Jo and Dean exchanged one of their little telepathic conversation glances. Sam had only known Jo for all of maybe two hours, now -- Dean for barely longer, really -- but he was already a little tired of those. "Okay," Dean said, straightening up himself, a paper roll held in both hands. He dropped his chin a little, and Sam wondered if he was trying to make a point of not looking _up_ at Sam. "I trust you." 

Sam blinked. He hadn't really expected it to be that easy. "You do?" 

"There a reason I shouldn't?" 

"No," Sam said. He shifted his weight, then realized he didn't have anywhere to go and just sort of ended up recrossing his arms. "Just . . . you barely know me." 

"You let me blindfold you and shove you in the back of a cargo bike with _Jo_ driving, then followed me into a _dumpster._ " He shrugged. "I'd say that earns a little bit of trust." 

"Huh," Sam said. "Well, then." 

"I don't trust you," Jo offered. Sam tried to turn his head to acknowledge her, but for some reason he was having trouble breaking Dean's eye contact. 

"You don't count," Dean said, his lip quirking up as Jo smacked him on the arm. "What about you, West? You trust us?" 

"I let you blindfold me and followed you into a dumpster," Sam said. 

But he still wasn't telling them his real name. 

"Okay then." Dean thwacked the paper roll against his right palm a few times, then swept some of the papers on the desk aside and started to unroll it. Sam leaned in and saw it was a map of Perdition, one of the official ones put out by City Hall, but with a number of extra markings in seemingly innocuous spots. Supply points, Sam guessed, or maybe other safe houses. "Let's get back to work. You said you knew where the grace supply's coming from?" 

Sam nodded, then shrugged. "Yeah. I mean, maybe. It's not really my department. I work with the Mayor." Dean and Jo both raised their eyebrows, as though to say 'yeah, and?' "But I hear things. Perdition's all human on the surface, but every side ends up with its prisoners of war, right?" 

"So it's true?" Jo asked. "You guys have your own pet angel, locked up and bleeding out somewhere?" 

"Is it really that hard to believe?" 

"Not even a little," Dean said. "Question is: where's it being kept? City Hall owns half the buildings in town, it could be in any one of them." 

Sam leaned over the map, resting his elbows on a stack of -- huh, work placement forms. Dean really _was_ a social worker. It fit, even as the Angel of Mercy, his main job was finding kids places to stay. 

More and more, it was looking like this was what the dreams had been trying to tell him. He was supposed to help Dean, help stop the supply of blood getting out onto the street. And then, if Sister Margaret was to be believed, he was going to save the world. 

And to think, just a few days ago, his biggest concern was making sure banners got printed for the Mayor's anniversary gala. 

"Okay, City Hall's here," he said, thinking out loud in order to derail the whole world savior train. He traced his finger along his usual route home. Fog aside, his dreams had been surprisingly literal -- it wasn't hard to find the spot where he'd turned off into the alley, or the block where he'd run into Dean in the balaclava. "We're going to want to look in this area," he said, circling the block with his fingertip. "A little to the north of -- there." He poked at a long rectangular building just past what he'd determined was the alley where dream!Dean had covered him from the blast. "The angel's being held there." He looked up to see Jo and Dean staring at him, eyebrows still raised, this time with a distinctly incredulous tilt. "What?" 

"The Penney building? There's nothing there," Jo said. Sam looked back down at the map. 

"It's a city owned building." 

"With nothing in it," Dean said. "It's been on the books to get torn down for something like five years." 

Sam shook his head. "How do you even know that?" 

"Dude," Dean said. "We live in an abandoned building. We try to keep track of what the city's looking to tear down."

Sam shook his head. "That's the perfect cover, then, isn't it? Empty government building, all tied up in bureaucratic red tape. What better place to hide their secrets?" 

"I dunno," Jo said. "I still say it's gotta be City Hall. That place gives me the creeps." 

"Buildings with four complete walls give you the creeps," Dean said. "What makes you pick that one?" he asked. "It's not the only one slated for demolition." 

"It's that one," Sam said. "You just -- have to trust me." 

No real name. No real explanation. Yeah, Sam was _totally_ trustworthy.

Dean nodded. "Okay. We'll stake it out, check the Guard situation. If you're wrong, though --" 

"You'll kill me, or do something more creatively unpleasant," Sam said. "But I'm not." 

*

"I'm telling you, man." Dean lifted his lit cigarette, flicked at the entirely non-existent accumulated ash, and lowered it again. He'd gone through a whole cigarette already, never once taking a drag. He'd said it gave him an excuse to be out on the street. Sam was pretty sure that at best all it was doing was making them both smell bad. He coughed not entirely discretely into his hand. Dean ignored it, like he had every other time Sam coughed. "This place looks deserted." 

"It's supposed to," Sam said. "You know, like how you're supposed to look like you're smoking. Which you don't, by the way." 

"I totally do," Dean said, ashing the cig again. The glowing red embers wobbled for a moment, then broke off, dangling from the end of the paper by a long strand of not-yet-burning tobacco. "Crap." 

Sam gave him a pointed look. 

"Shut your smug little government face," Dean said. 

"Civil service is nothing to be ashamed of." 

"You're servicing a civil that likes to maim the people and get them hooked on drugs that literally burn out your insides." 

Sam opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. "Fuck." 

Dean laughed once. He knocked the lit embers off the end of the cigarette and stomped them out on the ground. 

"No," Sam said. "Really. _Fuck._ I can't even -- I can't even say I didn't know. The brands and blood are common knowledge. I just never. I never _thought_ about it." 

Dean shrugged, studying the ragged end of the cigarette for a moment before flicking it away. "Not like you're alone, man. Like you said, common knowledge. Hell, I joined the Guard, once upon a time, and they're the ones who _do_ half the shit that goes down in this town. Most people just don't think about it." 

"You quit, though. You ditched out, even knowing they'd. . . ." Sam trailed off, running his finger around his own right eye. Dean raised his hand to his scars, then shook his head. 

"I needed a wake up call, same as anyone." 

"What was it?" 

"They offered me a place in the Corps." 

"You were a graceling?" 

"Never made it that far." Dean stared out into the darkness, hand still hovering by the scar. "They give you a test dose, you know, before you make the final decision. See if it kills you, or if you get fancy powers." He smiled faintly. "It's a helluva hit, man, I tell you what. Knocked my ass right out. They thought I was going to bite it, had the fire extinguishers all set. I came to in the dark with the things pointed at my face." He coughed into his hand, then grimaced. Sam wasn't sure if it was the cough, the story, or the smell of cigarette still clinging to his skin. "Found out later I'd knocked out power for the whole block. So, you know, no question if I qualified." 

Sam frowned. "So what happened?" 

"I didn't want it. That shit messed up my system like crazy, and -- well. None of it was any good. Thing is, once you pass that first test, you don't get to back out. It was ditch or get trapped." He shrugged, looking like he was holding another cigarette. "So, you know, I'm not actually the hero they like to make me out to be." 

Sam was staring. He knew he was, but he couldn't stop it. "Why the hell did you _stay?_ " he finally said. "Jo said you've known her family forever. You could have ditched out with them and just gone roaming."

"Don't think I didn't think of that." 

"So why? I mean, that seems at least a little bit on the 'hero' side, to me." 

Dean shook his head. "You really want to know?" 

"I've asked you, like, three times now." 

"I got a kid brother." Dean smiled faintly. "Okay, probably not much of a kid any more. I haven't seen him in more than twenty years, but he's around here, somewhere. I'm not leaving Perdition until I find him." He looked up at Sam then, and he looked older than he ever had since Sam had met him, but also . . . softer. It occurred to Sam that this was the first time he was seeing the _real_ Dean Winchester. "And when I do, I'd like to be able to look the guy in the eye." 

Sam found himself smiling back. Something niggled at the back of his head, pieces of some puzzle on the very edge of fitting together. "Dean," he started. "Your brother --" 

Dean cut him off, his head snapping to the side as the sound of footsteps came from the alley across the street. "Later, man," he hissed. "Something's happening." 

Sam bit his lip, but obligingly fell silent. He wasn't sure how he was going to ask what he wanted to, anyway. It was all a little too orphan pipe dream, really, and it wasn't like he and Dean _looked_ anything like each other. 

Still, he couldn't deny that it added up. And if Sam were going to have a brother, he was pretty sure he could do worse than the Angel of Mercy. 

*

"Houston, this is the angel, do you copy?" Dean pressed his thumb down on the button on the side of his walkie-talkie, resisting the urge to push the mic on his headset closer to his mouth. 

_"Loud and Clear, AOM,"_ Jo responded. _"Told you these were a good investment."_

Dean snorted. "Three years ago, Houston. We're lucky the batteries still work." He put his hand over the mic, looking over at West. "Seriously, at the time we _so_ didn't have a need for these things." He realized what he was doing and dropped his hand, rolling his eyes at himself. The things were going to take some getting used to. 

_"Luck's my middle name,"_ Jo said. _"Mom just pretends it's Beth so she doesn't give away my secret weapon."_ The line went silent for a few moments. West stared at Dean expectantly. 

"We'll get you a headset of your own next time an electronics scrounger shows up with one," Dean told him. "I promise." 

Static popped in his ear as Jo came back online. _"Okay, second Guard shift is on the move. If they keep up like they did last night, you've got two minutes to get through the door before third comes on."_

"Roger that," Dean said, futzing with the handset attached to his belt. "Switching to VOX." 

_"Oh goody."_

Dean flipped the switch on the side of the handset and was rewarded with another burst of static. Yeah, that was going to be fun. "Hey, no sass on the line. We're on a job, here." 

_"Uh huh. Get your cute little ass moving, AOM."_

Dean smiled, glancing back at West again, then realized he couldn't see the expression, seeing as they were both wearing ski masks. "She called me cute." 

_"Just your ass."_

Right. Voice activated transmission. Dean cleared his throat. "You ready to move, Compass Boy?" 

West rolled his eyes -- which, well, was at least a visible expression -- and sighed. "That's a terrible code name." 

"Shoulda thought of that before you were named," Dean said cheerfully. 

_"Less chatter, more B &E."_

"You're bossy, Houston." 

_"Don't make me come down there."_

"Promises, promises." Dean grinned again, then refocused himself. They only had a limited window, here. As much fun as he was having getting to tease both Jo and West at the same time, they really did have to get moving. "On the move." 

_"Roger that. No sign of third Guard yet."_

Security was pretty lax on the outside of the building -- the better to seem as deserted as possible, Dean supposed. They didn't really have much of an idea of what it would look like on the inside -- West had managed to get his hands on some schematics at the office, but since even to most of City Hall, the place was just an old empty department store, he hadn't been able to locate any indication of what it was being used for or where it was being kept. Or what kind of security it'd have inside. 

The door they'd picked was a former fire exit, a single thick metal door set off alone on the side of the building, far enough away from the old loading bay not to be immediately visible to anyone coming and going from that end. Surveillance the night before had shown that most of the activity going in and out was by the loading bay. A well-placed street urchin with a rock had taken care of the light over the fire exit. As Dean had predicted, the Guard hadn't bothered to go in and fix it yet. Which meant less likelihood of him and West getting spotted, but also meant there wasn't exactly a lot of light to pick the lock on the door by. 

Dean did his best not to curse out loud as his pick slipped again, well aware that anything he said sent pops and bursts of static into Jo's ears along with his actual words. He didn't quite manage to bite back the expletive that came out when West suddenly pushed him to the side and grabbed the picks, though. 

_"What?"_ Jo demanded. _"What's he doing?!"_

"Dude," Dean hissed, but his protest was cut off when the door cracked open. West handed him back his picks, and though Dean couldn't see it under the ski mask, he was sure the kid was giving him his little prissy-lipped smug face. "When did you learn how to pick locks?" 

"What exactly do you think we did for fun at Billy's?" West asked. 

"I don't know," Dean admitted. He pushed past, leaning into the hallway beyond the fire door to make sure the path was clear before gesturing West in after him. "Tea parties and shit." 

"Sister Margaret makes a mean cup of tea," West said, sticking rather closer behind Dean than was strictly necessary. The door swung shut and they found themselves in darkness. "And worked as an assistant to a performing escape artist before the war." He patted Dean on the back between the shoulder blades. "I'll have to introduce you two, some day." 

"Sure," Dean muttered. "Meg the escapist nun. Can't wait." 

Jo, apparently, had nothing to add.

They made their way slowly down the hallway, Dean keeping one hand lightly on the wall to make sure they didn't accidentally walk into it. They reached a junction after several feet, and Dean glanced back, waiting for signal from West on which way to go. 

"Offices to the left," West muttered. "Main showroom is past those. Warehouse is straight ahead." 

Dean nodded. "Straight first. We'd see a light if they were working in the warehouse right now." 

They came to the double doors leading into the warehouse after another twenty feet or so. Each door had a single round window. When Dean peered in, he could see the shapes of shelves by the dim illumination of an emergency light at the far side of the room. He didn't spot any movement. "Looks clear," he said. "But it's hard to say for sure. Too many shelves." 

"Gives us places to hide too, right?" West asked. 

Dean shrugged. "Sure." He pressed his shoulder into the door, feeling it give easily. It was double-hinged, which would make it easy to make a quick escape if they needed to, though it also made it harder to secure it against anyone coming in. "Loading dock opens into here, right?" 

"Far corner," West confirmed. "We'd better stick close to the shelves." 

Dean led the way into the warehouse, slipping quickly and quietly across the open space in front of the doors and making his way over to the first set of shelves, his back against it as he listened for any other movements. West followed, proving himself to be pretty light on his feet as well, for a freaking giant. Dean wouldn't say it to his face -- not yet, anyway -- but West actually made a pretty good partner in crime. When he decided he was in on something, he gave it his all, and he was proving quite capable when it came to planning and executing a heist. 

Now, if only they could work out what they were stealing. 

There was a faint clank as West poked at the items on the shelves they were hiding next to. "Mike and Lucy," he hissed. "It really is an armory." 

Dean twisted around. "The armory's on the other side of -- holy mother of crap." 

West was holding the largest, fanciest gun Dean had ever seen. The Guard was issued short range weapons and riot control gear -- bean bag guns, tear gas bombs and the like. Firearms were strictly controlled by the government. The Guard wasn't allowed to kill humans any more than anyone else was, and they didn't work that well on angels or demons. Those working the gates might have a rifle or two on hand for croats -- which hadn't been an issue in years -- or more mundane monsters, but no one within the walls was allowed to carry even an old revolver, much less a giant automatic weapon like the one West had picked up. 

"The government has a secret stockpile of banned weapons," West said. "I can't even be surprised any more." 

"Really?" Dean asked. "'Cause I am." West looked over at him and he shrugged. "I mean, in retrospect, sure, of course they've got enough firepower to wipe out the whole town. But if they do that, who are they going to order around for shits and giggles?" 

"I'm really starting to hate this place," West said. 

_"Hate to interrupt,"_ Jo said, bursting into the conversation on a wave of static so thick it took Dean a moment to work out what she was saying. _"But third Guard just made it to the loading bay."_

Dean signalled for West to put the gun down. "We've got incoming," he said. "Let's get moving." 

He didn't mention that they were maybe losing their signal with their eye in the sky. No need to worry the kid. 

"You don't want to check the rest of this place?" 

Dean shook his head. "We can head back over later. You can't get blood from a stone -- or from a stockpile of weapons. Well, not while they're actively stockpiled, anyway." 

Sam nodded. "Offices?" 

"Worth a shot." 

They ducked back out the double doors just as the lights in the warehouse came on full, giving Dean a momentary eyeful of just how many racks of weapons the Guard had been hiding. There was enough firepower in that room to take down a small country. You know, if countries were still a thing out there in the world, somewhere. Human life was considered so sacrosanct that the government wouldn't even exile someone for fear of being thought murderers. 

Just who were they expecting to use all those guns on? 

* 

The first two offices were empty. West spent several moments with his ear pressed to each door to listen for any movement before they tried opening them. Dean would've done it, but the headset made it hard to get as close as he needed to to the door to listen effectively, and besides, he was kind of hoping Jo would give them another update any moment now. They contained only dusty desks and scattered paperwork. Dean looked over a few -- with the doors closed behind them, he figured they could risk a flashlight -- but they dated back before the war, showing itemized lists of stock and prices, employee schedules, department store stuff. Dean took a moment to wonder at the idea of having one single merchant offering everything you could possibly need to get by in life -- no haggling, no worrying that the roamer troop that sells you your blankets won't make it back from their latest round of the other human strongholds. 

It'd been a different world. 

The third door didn't look any different from the first two, but when West put his head against the door, he flinched back. 

"What?" 

"It's hot." 

Dean reached over and rested his palm against the wood. West was right, it felt warm against his hand. Which meant either someone had just recently been leaning against it, or -- 

He put his hand to the door knob, feeling the same warmth on the metal, and gave it a test turn. Locked. "Can you work your magic?" 

West nodded. Dean kept watch while he worked the picks into the lock. He had it open in a matter of seconds, and Dean stuck close behind him as he eased the door inward. 

The first thing he noticed was the ring of low flames burning on the floor, heating the tiny room enough for it to seep through the wood and metal of the door. The second thing was the man in a ragged suit slumped chained to a chair in the middle of that ring, an IV sticking out of the side of his neck. Dean sucked in a soft breath between his teeth. 

Looked like they found the source of the grace. 

West slipped into the room, with Dean fast on his heels. He eased the door closed behind them, but left it cracked enough to let some of the cooler air of the hallway in behind them -- and let in enough sound for them to hear if someone was coming. There was barely enough room between the circle of flames and the wall for the two of them to stand. 

The man in the chair stirred, his chin lifting a few inches before sagging back down. His dark hair by all rights should have been slicked to his head with sweat -- Dean could feel moisture soaking his ski mask, and he'd only been in the room a few moments, so far -- but it stuck up at odd angles. 

Right, angels didn't sweat, did they? 

". . . Do we kill it?" West asked, his voice low and almost reverent. Dean shot him a wide eyed look. 

"You got a fancy angel sword on you, G-boy?" 

The angel stirred again, this time lifting his head all the way up and opening his eyes. He squinted past the flames at them for a moment, and then Dean saw his shoulders sag. He'd've thought they couldn't get any lower than they already were. 

"Dean," the angel said. Dean shivered despite the heat. The man's gaze moved from Dean to West. "You found him." 

Uh, okay. "Yeah, man. We found you." Dean eased his way around the circle, taking in the chains that held the angel down. They were inscribed with enochian sigils, adding an extra line of defence to the ring of holy fire. 

"You don't recognize me," the angel said, talking almost more to himself than to Dean. "No, of course you don't. I've changed vessels since then." 

_"You can't keep doing this, Dean." Dad's friend crouched down, reaching out to put his fingers on the head of the baby in Dean's arms. Sammy sucked in a breath, the blue on his skin disappearing as he started to cry. "I can't keep bringing him back for you."_

Dean froze. The angel stared at him, looking tranquil as you please, even with the dark circles under his eyes, the constant flow of blood from his neck into the IV bag hanging on a pole behind him. The vessel was young, Dean saw, no older than West was. He hadn't shaved before the angel had taken him, or maybe the angel had never bothered to learn how. Dean wasn't exactly sure how all that worked; most folks in Perdition only learned as much about angels as they needed to keep them out. "We know each other?" 

The angel nodded, looking resigned. "It was a long time ago. I forget how fragile your memories can be." 

_"You need to get help, Dean."_

_"Please," Dean sobbed. He clutched Sammy harder to his chest. "I didn't mean it. He wouldn't stop crying. I didn't mean it."_

_"You can't keep doing this."_

The air was too close in here, with all the fire and the heat. Dean couldn't catch his breath. West -- wisely -- was keeping out of it all, sticking close to the door even as Dean made his way around the circle of holy fire. 

It was right on the edge of Dean's mind, hiding behind a wave of panic and the shape of his father's chin. 

"Castiel." 

The angel smiled. "I knew you'd find us." 

Dean's brain latched on to the tiny details, not quite up to looking at the larger ones, just yet. "Us?" 

"Myself," Castiel nodded towards West. "And your brother." 

Dean's head snapped up to look at West, who was now exactly halfway across the ring of fire from him. The ski mask and the odd shadows cast by the fire hid the other man's expression completely. 

It wasn't possible. 

"Sammy?" 

* 

Sam couldn't actually see Dean's eyes. His cheekbones, lit from beneath, shadowed them into pits. It was eerily reminiscent of his dreams, strange enough to make him shiver. 

"Is your name Sam?" Dean demanded. Sam swallowed. 

"Yes." 

"Why did you lie?" 

It was a quiet sort of anger, completely different than what Sam had seen back at the Mercy House, when Dean had thought Sam had slipped Andy drugs. That had been a boiling rage. This didn't even quite simmer, just glowed, red hot and yet somehow fragile, like molten glass. 

"I didn't," Sam said, pitching his voice low. "My full name is Sam West." 

"West. Sam _West_." It came out breathless, and Dean reached up, yanking his balaklava up off of his face. The movement knocked his headset askew, but he didn't seem to notice. "Your name is _Sam West._ "

Sam reached up and pulled his own mask up, hoping that actually being able to see each other's faces might make this conversation easier. "The sisters at Billy's called me that," he explained. "There was a name stitched into the back of my clothes: Sam W." 

"You were a foundling." 

"I was left in a box on the steps." Sam had to look away, Dean's gaze -- or at least the direction of those dark, shadowed eyes -- was too intense. "By the Angel of Mercy." 

The angel, still sitting in the chair in the center of the circle, straightened. "Angel of Mercy?" 

"Relax, Cas," Dean said. The angel frowned at the diminutive, but didn't say anything. "It's just the name they use for me." 

"Who?" Castiel asked. "Who gave you that title?" 

Dean shrugged and shook his head. "I don't know, it just kinda evolved." 

"Sister Margaret," Sam said, then resisted the urge to shrink back when both Dean and Castiel looked at him at the same time. "At Billy's. I don't know if she came up with it, but she was the first one I heard use it. By the time the third or fourth kid got dropped off, it kind of stuck." 

"In Judaism and Islam, the term 'Angel of Mercy' most often refers to one specific being," Castiel said, his face utterly serious. "The archangel Michael." 

"You mean Michael Michael," Dean said. "As in 'Lucifer and Michael'." 

"Yes." 

Sam shook his head. "We didn't cover that bit in school," he said. 

"You went to school?" Dean asked, surprised. Sam looked back at him, eyebrows going up. 

"You didn't?" 

Dean stared at him for a few beats, then shook his head. "Okay, nicknames and all that aside, can we get back to the part where _you're my little brother?_ " 

"I thought you knew," Castiel said. He sounded apologetic. Sam hadn't realized angels could sound that way. 

He was beginning to think that for all he'd learned about angels back at Billy's, and from the government PSAs about them, he didn't actually know much more than how to keep them out. 

"Yeah, well, I didn't," Dean said, the anger from earlier having given way into a more garden variety irritation. He looked back across the circle at Sam. "Did you?" 

"I, uh." Sam went for sheepish, and hoped it translated despite the low light. "I was kinda starting to wonder. But only just tonight." He heard a sound out in the hallway and stiffened. "Crap. We may have incoming." 

Dean nodded once, then stepped over the low burning flame and knelt behind Castiel's chair. Sam heard metal clanking on metal. 

"What are you doing?!" Sam hissed, at the same time that Castiel said "Dean, you have to go." 

"You're the reason Sam and I are still alive," Dean said. "We're getting you out of here." 

Sam edged up to the door and tried to peer out through the crack. The darkness of the hallway outside was only compounded by the afterimages of flames at the bottom of Sam's vision. He couldn't see a damned thing. He held his breath and listened. 

Voices, but faint. Somewhere down at the other end of the hall, maybe from the warehouse. 

There was more clanking behind Sam, and then the sound of a chair being cast aside. Down the hall, the sound of a door swinging open and shut. Sam squinted, but still couldn't see anyone in the hall. There was a short rush of breeze and the sound of feathers. Dean cursed. 

When Sam looked back, the chair interrupted the ring of fire, and the angel was gone.

"Some gratitude," Dean said, and under his anger Sam could hear hurt feelings. He wondered just how well Dean had known the guy. 

Were angels guys? 

"We need to move," Sam reminded him, reaching up to pull his mask back down. Dean nodded, adjusting his own and shifting the headset back into place. He flinched, holding the ear piece slightly away from his ear. 

"I read you, Houston," he said. "We had some interference -- how many? The whole alley? . . . Are there _any_ clear exits? . . . Roger that." He looked up at Sam. "Guard's closing in. We're going to need to go out the front." 

Through the showroom, Sam thought. There were a few double doors on that side, though they were pretty well boarded up. There was one with enough of an opening left for him and Dean to slip through, but it was clear across the building from the offices where they stood now. 

"Let's go, then," he said, and he slid the door open as gentle as he could and stepped out into the hallway. Dean crossed the room in just a few steps, fire be damned -- it didn't take much flame to keep an angel in check, apparently -- and came out after him. 

"You there!" someone shouted from the other end of the hall, maybe fifty or sixty feet away.. Sam froze. The beam of a flashlight switched on and hit his face, making him squint. "Stop right where you are." 

"You know, we'd love to," Dean said. His hand came down hard on Sam's shoulder, pulling backward. "But we're on a bit of a schedule." He bolted, dragging Sam after him. 

The doors to the showroom were closer to the office where Castiel had been held than the guards at the hallway t-junction were to Sam and Dean. They made it through the doors and out onto the showroom floor before Sam heard the doors to the offices slam open. Someone shouted about the angel being missing, another about a superior officer. 

Sam just barely made out the word "cauterize" before he was too far away to hear any more. 

The showroom floor hadn't been repurposed or kept up the way the warehouse had. It was still filled with glass cases and metal racks that had been used to display merchandise when the store was still in operation. None of the goods remained, and most of the cases were broken open and the racks twisted and collapsed, evidence of the looting and panic that had descended on the town in the early days of the war, before Perdition was established and order brought back to the people. Stealth abandoned in favor of speed now that they had been caught, Dean led the way by barging right through the mess, shoving debris to the side almost in an afterthought as he went. Sam grabbed what he could and threw it behind him, hoping that it'd trip up and slow down their pursuers. 

If, you know, there were any pursuers. He could hear the pounding of countless feet on linoleum, but it was all distant, back in the hallway and maybe the warehouse. It didn't seem like anyone had followed them out into the showroom, yet. 

"Dean," Sam gasped. He wasn't used to running this much. "Dean, something's --" 

And then the world exploded.

* 

Dean woke up with his brother on top of him. 

Sam was massive. He'd known that much since the first time he laid eyes on him, of course; Sam tended to slouch a bit, like he was almost embarrassed by his height, but it wasn't exactly the sort of detail one missed. 

Dean hadn't realized that a beanpole could weigh this much, though. 

"Sam," he grunted, pawing at the kid's shoulder. "Dude." Sam didn't stir. Dean couldn't get the leverage to push the kid off with his hands, so he twisted, trying to wriggle out from underneath him, instead. 

A bolt of pain shot up his left leg, starting somewhere low in his calf and pressing up past his hip until it reached the side of his jaw. Dean just barely managed to hold back a scream. He squeezed his eyes shut and just breathed through clenched teeth for several moments, trying to hold it together. The pain didn't subside when he held still, but he could at least pretend he could handle it better. 

Some extra shock would be nice right now, though. He liked broken bones much better when he could be blissfully unaware that they'd happened. 

"Sammy," he squeezed out. "I really need you to wake up right now." 

No response. When Dean opened his eyes again, he could see flames over his brother's shoulder. 

"Yeah," he gasped. "That's no good. We're not doing that." He grit his teeth and held his breath and without biting back the wrenching scream this time, forced his way out from under Sam and promptly collapsed. 

"I'm good," he whispered when he came to again. He knew he'd blacked out, because the flames had jumped forward. "I'm good, just give me a minute." He groped across the floor with one hand until he found a nice long metal pole, and then was inordinately proud of himself when he managed to pull himself to his uninjured knee without crying or throwing up. 

His injured leg stretched out next to him, not pointing in entirely the right direction. If he didn't look at it, he could pretend it didn't exist. 

Or, you know, maybe he'd just go ahead and throw up, after all. 

"Sammy." He used the pole to drag himself back over to where Sam lay prone. "Shit, man, I seriously _cannot_ get you out of here, like this. You have to wake up." Sam still didn't move. Dean couldn't tell if he was breathing. "Fuck. Fuck, tell me I didn't find you just to get you _killed_ again. Tell me I didn't." 

Yeah. Apparently he was going to cry after all, too. 

"Dean." 

He thought for a moment Sam had said it, but his brother was still prone. He looked up and saw Castiel standing over them both, his suit still rumpled and torn. He wasn't wearing any shoes. 

Dean choked out a laugh. "Deja fucking vu." 

Castiel shook his head. "Sam's not dead." He crouched down, reaching over to press his fingers to Sam's head. "He will only have a minor concussion, now. It may have been much worse, if you hadn't broken his fall." 

That forced another laugh up Dean's throat. And some bile. "Oh. Goody." 

"I'm sorry," Castiel said. "My captivity has drained me more than I anticipated. I thought to go for assistance, but found I could only fly as far as the street outside. Your friend Jo was rather startled." 

"I'll make it up to her," Dean said. His fingers started to ache where they were clenched around the pole. It distracted him from the pain in his leg, so he squeezed it harder. "Just get us out of here." 

"I fear I will only be able to transport one of you at a time." 

Dean's brain just -- blanked. Emptied out and hit pause on all but his most vital functions for a full five seconds. Only one of them. One at a time. They were trapped in a fire in a secret government armory, surrounded by the guard, his brother was unconscious, his leg was broken, and the angel who saved him as a child only to ditch him on the streets of this godforsaken town could only save _one of them at a time._

"Sam," Dean said. "Take Sam."

"Your leg," said Castiel.

"Will still be broken when you come back for me. Now get moving." 

Castiel stared at him for a moment longer, his eyes clear blue and piercing. They used to be brown, Dean thought, though he couldn't be sure. "Okay." 

And then he and Sam were gone. Dean sank back down to the floor, letting out a pained squeal when the motion set off sirens in his leg all over again. He breathed through it as best he could and waited for Castiel to come back. 

Deja fucking vu.

"Over here!" Someone shouted. A moment later, Dean was looking up into the muzzle of a non-lethal beanbag-firing guard-issue weapon. 

"Oh," he said, hoping they didn't want him to raise his hands. "Goody." 

*

Waking up seemed to take an eternity. 

Sam caught consciousness in glimpses: a fevered breath on his cheek; snatches of a man and a woman shouting; fingers digging into sore muscles. The feeling of movement, his limbs tangled into awkward shapes; a few syllables of Latin. Sam tried, but he couldn't make the pieces work together into a narrative. Still, it seemed to take less effort than opening his eyes, so Sam contented himself with constructing dreams out of smoke and mental ephemera. 

He was finally driven to full consciousness by, of all things, the fullness of his bladder. 

"Woah, kid," a woman's voice said as he forced himself to roll over and shoved up out of the deep mattress he was lying on. "Not so fast." 

"Gotta go," Sam muttered, his eyes cracked open only just wide enough to make sure he didn't walk into a wall. The light, faint as it was, hurt. He made it maybe three steps before two things occurred to him: first, his head was spinning, not the room itself, and second, he actually had no idea where the bathroom might be. 

Two sets of hands caught him by his upper arms as his knees buckled. They guided him backward until he sat on the edge of the bed he'd just been lying in (he had to assume, he still hadn't gotten his eyes open wide enough to see if there were any other beds in the room). 

"Sit down, son." A male voice, this time. "You took a bit of a beating." 

Sam huffed, shrugging away from his grip. He tried to come up with a clever euphemism, but his headache had paralyzed the wit centers of his brain. "Have to pee." 

"Ah," the woman said. "Jim?" 

"I'll attend," said the man, and after a brief, quiet pause during which Sam really hoped the woman had left the room, he did, with a brisk professionalism that Sam had to respect. "There we are," he said, when the task was finished and Sam had let himself slump backwards onto the bed, sinking down into the feather mattress, not entirely sure he'd be able to get back up again. "Better?" 

Sam grunted what he hoped was intelligible as a "yes". The light on the other side of his eyelids dimmed a bit, and Sam sighed softly under his breath, using the reprieve from the pounding of his head to review what he could remember before all the floaty and disjointed bits. 

He jackknifed back up right, only to be caught by the arms again. " _Dean_ ," he said. "Where's Dean?" 

Jim, who if Sam had the right person, was the older man with a gray goatee who helped Dean attend to Andy when he overdosed, eased Sam back down. "I'm afraid we're still working on that, just now." 

Sam didn't resist the mattress again -- couldn't if he'd wanted to. He swallowed, saliva rushing to fill his mouth. He'd never felt this terrible, not even as a child when he came down with a vicious sinus infection that had knocked him out of commission for days and sent the nuns into a flurry. He missed his small apartment across town, his own familiar bed and his own familiar bathroom. He wished Sister Margaret were there, to press cool cloths to his head and lecture him teasingly about being lazy. 

He wanted his family. 

"Did you know?" he asked Jim, cracking his eyes open wide enough to make out a blurry impression of the man's face. He was sitting by the edge of the bed, his hands folded in his lap. He wore a black turtleneck, the sort that hadn't been popular among anyone but the Guard since before the war.

"Know what?" Jim asked. 

Sam shook his head and immediately regretted it. "No, you wouldn't. We didn't even know." 

Jim leaned forward further. "West. What didn't you know?" 

Sam felt himself smile a little. "That's not my name," he said. He realized a moment too late that he maybe shouldn't be sharing this with the old man, though he seemed to be one of Dean's friends. Sam didn't know how the hierarchy of the Mercy House worked, who knew how much about Dean's history. 

"I'm sorry," Jim said, with a practised lack of judgement that Sam most associated with the more serious nuns at Billy's. Sam remembered hearing mention of a padre somewhere in Mercy House, and wondered if Jim still took confession. "What name would you prefer?" 

"Sam." 

"Well, Sam. It's nice to properly meet you. I'm James Murphy, though most around here call me Old Jim." 

"Mean," Sam noted. 

"Gentle teasing, that's all." Sam watched his expression and thought he still saw curiosity burning behind the mask of a professional counselor. 

"Did you know," he asked, choosing to test the waters a bit, "that Dean had a brother?" 

"Still does, we hope," Jim said. "Do you know of him?" 

"Sure," Sam said with an abbrieviated laugh that nonetheless managed to light up the back of his skull. "He's kind of an ass."

"Well," Jim said fondly. "He would be _Dean's_ brother, after all." 

The laugh came out in full this time, devolving into a groan at the end as Sam tried to hold his head on. "How'd I get out?" he asked, deciding not to press the brother angle, for now. 

"The angel Castiel," Jim said. "He transported you from the fire, he says at Dean's request. He was quite upset when he returned for Dean and found him missing." 

"Missing?" Sam frowned. "He didn't -- he's not --" 

"The angel seems to think he'd be able to tell if Dean had been killed." Jim didn't sound terribly confident. Once upon a time, Sam understood, angels had been mystical, beautific creatures, full of mystery and near omniscience. The reality had made bitter cynics of much of the former clergy. "I'm afraid we haven't managed to learn much more, as of yet." 

"If the Guard has him," Sam said slowly, "we'll probably find out soon enough. He'd get a public trial." 

"Such as they are," Jim said, sounding disgusted. "And that's assuming they wouldn't simply kill him outright." 

"They wouldn't." For everything else Sam had learned to question over the last week or so, that he was still certain of. "Human life is too precious to waste. Even a criminal one." 

"So they say," Jim said. "What would you say the likelihood is that they'd simply lock him secretly away?" 

"Yeah," Sam said, after several moments. "That they might do." 

"It's too bad we've all been so thorough in warding our buildings," Jim said. "Perhaps otherwise we might have put your benefactor to use finding our wayward leader." 

"Yeah," Sam said, closings his eyes. "Too bad." 

*

_Well,_ Dean thought. _At least they splinted my leg._

They had him tied to a chair, not locked into one of the cells in the basement of Guard HQ, where he'd spent the first several days after his desertion. In fact, as far as he could tell -- though he'd admittedly not been able to pay that much attention, considering that they hadn't splinted him until after they'd dragged him out to the paddy wagon and driven him across town -- he was in City Hall. One of the upper floors, well away from the public court rooms and offices Dean had spent his time in in his capacity as social worker or felon. 

It was an enormous room, full to the brim of pre-war opulence. A large computer took up one side of the desk at the far wall, and the leather chair behind it was worn, but clearly expertly cared for. A large painting hung on the wall opposite an entire bank of widows, an abstract piece full of bright color blocks and jagged dashes of black. A full size refrigerator/freezer combo stood prominently along the wall to Dean's left along with a marble countertop with a gleaming sink and an almost obscene number of electrical appliances, including what Dean finally managed to identify as a microwave. It took him awhile -- he hadn't seen a clean and operational one since he was tiny. Even the chair Dean was roped into was all polished wood and clean rattan. 

Smart money put him in the office of the Mayor himself. 

So, you know, Dean was _screwed_. 

If things had been going even a little bit his way, the moment after he realized whose office he was trapped in would be the moment that the Mayor would come in, possibly cackling wickedly and full of a blustery confession of all his evil plans. Nothing had ever gone Dean's way, though, so he was stuck sitting in the chair, his broken leg stuck awkwardly into the air supported only by the splint digging into the back of his thigh, for pretty much the entire night, of which there'd been _plenty_ left after his and West's -- _Sam's_ , fuck -- raid. He did his best to stay focussed on what he knew about the Mayor's operations, the layout of City Hall, hell, even some rather creative and biology-defying ways he could have gotten himself out of the fire before the Guard had shown up, but no matter what he tried, his mind always came back to _Sam's alive_ and _Sam's a government stooge_ and _I fucked it all up, even without being there, I still managed to fuck him up_. 

It made for a pretty terrible night. 

The sky out the windows was just beginning to gather a lighter tint around the edges when the door behind Dean finally opened, and he heard soft footsteps approach on the damn deep pile carpet. 

"Dean Winchester," a familiar, saccharine voice said. A bald, pallid man in a sharply pressed black suit that probably cost more than everything in Mercy House put together circled the chair, his fingertips just brushing Dean's shoulder. Dean made a point of not flinching away, holding firmly still in the chair and appearing unaffected. "So nice to see you again." 

Dean raised an eyebrow. "We met?" 

"Well of course!" The Mayor plucked a chair -- upholstered in red paisley -- from in front of his desk and set it down across from Dean. "I don't suppose you'd remember, though. You had, ah, _other_ things on your mind." He ran a finger around his right eye and winked. "Ruben Buckner, Mayor of Perdition."

"Yeah," Dean said, unimpressed. "I know who you are." 

"Yes, certainly, certainly." The Mayor brushed this off with an actual sweep of his hand. "Now, Dean -- can I call you Dean?"

"Sure, Rube." 

"Now, Dean. I thought we got all of your anti-establishment urges out of the way with that whole leaving the Guard fiasco a few years ago, but now I hear you've been engaging in espionage! I have to say, I'm disappointed." 

Dean studied the Mayor's bland expression for several moments. As much time as he'd spent in City Hall over the years, first as a member of the Guard, then later as a representative for Jo and her community, he'd never actually managed to get up close and personal with the man before. He'd been running Perdition as long as Dean could remember. There'd been a handful of elections, each one won in a landslide, and several election cycles that were cancelled due to lack of opposition. It'd taken years of comparing notes with the other "unsavory types" frequenting Mercy House before they'd come up with a theory of just how the Mayor had managed everything he'd accomplished in the last twenty years, and now, at last, Dean had a chance to test it. 

"Christo," he said.

The Mayor hissed, his eyes flicking to full black. 

Perdition, the so-called human capital of the former United States of America, if not the entire world, a community nominally created by humans, for humans, with no angels or demons allowed within the bounds of its massive, thickly warded wall, was a total sham. Even having basically known that, all these years, Dean still found himself disappointed. 

"Cute," the Mayor said, all hint of the cloying, jolly persona falling away. "You think you're pretty clever, don't you?" 

Dean smirked. "I think I'm adorable." 

He expected to get slapped. Instead, the Mayor sat back, crossing one leg fastidiously over the other. "You found our pet angel, so I can't say I'm surprised. I would have thought you were too clever to let on that you knew, though." 

"I've never really known when to keep my mouth shut." 

"We've noticed." The Mayor folded his hands in his lap and fixed his eyes on Dean. "So here's the thing, Dean. We know you've found your brother." 

Dean frowned. "What brother?" 

"Really? Now you decide to dissemble?"

"What?" Dean smirked, deciding not to let on that he wasn't totally sure what 'dissemble' meant. "You just made fun of me for not even trying, right?" 

The Mayor just sighed. "Really, you kids these days. We know you've found Sam. And you know that we have access to him." He smiled. "He's just about the best assistant I've ever had. Well, right up until the part where you convinced him to turn on everything he's worked for since you dropped him off at our orphanage. I tell you, the plans for the big 20th anniversary celebration have stalled out completely. Perdition needs that celebration, Dean. The world is very hard and scary, right now, and the people need someone to hold their hand and tell them it's all okay. Do you honestly think they care if it's technically the enemy who's doing the handholding?" 

"Since you people are actually trying to end the world?" Dean said. "Yeah, I think people might have a problem with that." 

"You may be surprised," the Mayor said. "Now, you've put us in a bit of a tight spot, here, Dean. Your former CO is recommending you be locked up for the rest of your life. First desertion, and now treason?" He shook his head. "You know, we haven't even invented a brand for treason, yet. Most folks who've tried it don't have as many friends as you, who would put up a fuss if we just quietly put you to death." 

"Gosh," Dean said, voice as dry as his throat had become. "Sorry to be such a hassle." 

"We considered taking your leg," the Mayor said, casual as you please, as though crippling a man was simply par for the course. Which, yeah, okay, demon here. It kind of was. "But that would just put an undue burden on the poor citizens of Perdition who'd have to pick up your slack and medical bills. That doesn't sound fair, does it?" 

"Can we skip right to the part where you reveal your whole evil plan to me, already?" Dean said. "Because my ass went to sleep, like, three hours ago." 

"Fine," the Mayor said. "We'll cut to the chase. We're going to give you a choice, Dean. You can either complete the process you started before you left the Guard and join the Graceling Corps -- to be instated in full once we've confirmed you've become fully addicted to the blood, of course. Or you can help us out with a little ritual we've been just dying to try out." 

"Well, let's see," Dean said. "How bout neither?" 

"In that case, we'll arrest Sam as well, then interrogate you both. Do you remember interrogation, Dean?" 

Dean's right eye squeezed shut, an ache forming around and behind it as he remembered just what the interrogation after his arrest for desertion had entailed. "Yeah, 'cause I'm sure if I play your game you'll just let Sam off." 

"Of course we will," the Mayor said. "Sam has a lot of potential, you know. I'd really hate to see it wasted."

Dean actually considered that. He didn't know why Sam was so valuable to the Mayor. Most of the higher ups in City Hall were confirmed blood addicts -- demon blood was as vicious as angel, just slightly less likely to kill you outright first time you took it -- but he had no way of knowing how many actual full demons there were in the ranks. What reason did demons have to be so interested in his brother? 

For that matter, what reason did an angel like Castiel have to help out Dean? 

"You know what?" the Mayor said, when Dean had apparently been quiet too long. He got to his feet and clapped his hands. "We don't really need any more gracelings. I vote ritual, what do you say?" 

"What?" Dean had to lean back to look the Mayor pretty much anywhere other than the crotch. 

"Yeah," the Mayor said. "I was pretty much going to make you do the ritual no matter what you chose. And I got bored. Guards!" Two men in uniform came in and flanked Dean's chair. "Go get Mr. Winchester prepped, and let me know when the stage in the market square's been completed." 

"It'll be finished this morning, sir," the guard on the left said. 

"Excellent." The Mayor wiggled his fingers at Dean, who worked against his bonds, trying to dodge the grip of the guards. "Have fun, Dean. I'll see you tonight!" 

* 

It'd taken a bit of fast talking on Sam's part, but he eventually managed to convince the folks at Mercy House that the best plan for recovering their "fearless leader" was for him to go back to work. It helped that Sam really _did_ think it was the only way they were going to find out for sure what had happened to Dean, though he also just wanted to get out of the house, away from all the people his brother -- _his brother!_ \-- had made friends with, had saved, while Sam was out, what? Filing paperwork? Getting coffee? No one outside the mayor's office could even _afford_ coffee, and the Mayor's executive staff could go through three pots a day. 

Dean was wrong: Sam had noticed the discrepencies before. He'd thought about them. He'd just always come down on the side of thinking how great it was that he personally got to take advantage of them, drink real coffee instead of chicory, live in his own apartment instead of a cramped dorm or an illegal co-op. He'd always known he was lucky, that he'd managed to land at Billy's instead of growing up a street rat, that the Mayor had decided to come by the children's home to find new staff members when he did. But sticking out enough to be recruited as an executive assistant? That was all him. That was all in how hard he'd worked, growing up, making sure he spent time at the library instead of trying to score deals on the playground. He'd sacrificed for his position in the world. He'd given up on friendships, on girls -- and it was all to end up on the wrong end of a government that wouldn't be out of place in a pre-war dystopian protest novel. 

All while his brother -- _his BROTHER!_ \-- scraped by doing just what he'd always been so proud of getting away from. Dean had risked everything to fight against what he saw going wrong around him. Hell, even after he'd had the Perdition version of a scarlet A carved into his face, he still kept trying to change things. 

How was Sam supposed to look Dean's friends in the eye, knowing all that? 

Of course, his strategy of get out and go back to normal came with trying to work out how he was going to look his coworkers in the eye, too. Or, for that matter, his boss. 

He had to work that last bit out real quick. Sam always started his mornings by bringing Mayor Bruckner a coffee and a copy of his revised schedule. As the little clock on his desk ticked over to nine AM, Sam prepared to just that, date book tucked under his arm, a steaming cup of joe -- black as a demon's soul, the Mayor liked to joke -- in hand. He reached up to knock on the heavy wooden doors that led into the executive office. 

"Come on in!" The Mayor's voice seemed to be extra cheerful, this morning. Sam wondered if he was imagining it, or if the man really got a kick out of punishing those who worked against him. Sam pressed the door open just wide enough to slip past and almost tripped over a wood-and-wicker chair set in the middle of the floor. "Sorry about that," the Mayor said. "I had an early appointment this morning, and haven't had a chance to clean up." 

Sam tried not to be too obvious as he checked the chair for bloodstains. 

"Got your coffee, sir," he said, trying to remember what sort of expression he usually wore for these morning meetings. "And the day's schedule." 

"Sam!" the Mayor stood up from behind his desk, circling around it to take the mug from Sam's outstretched hand. "It's good to see you in! We weren't sure you'd make it, this morning." 

Sam tried to look chagrinned. "I know I've been out for a little while, sir. I'm afraid I came down with a little something." 

"Well, it's no wonder, is it?" the Mayor asked. "What with the company you've been keeping." 

Sam was glad he didn't still have the coffee in his hand. It'd only emphasize the way he was shaking. "Sir?" 

"Oh don't worry, son," the Mayor said. "We all have our little rebellious periods. Though breaking into a facility you're not actually cleared to know about?" He tsked air between his teeth. "That's a little more rebellious than most." 

Somewhere in the midst of the incomprehensible babble trying to launch itself from Sam's tongue was a denial. "Sir --" 

"I said don't worry, Sam," the Mayor repeated, putting his hand on Sam's. "There, now, you're shaking! Sit down, son, sit. Let me get you a drink." 

Sam sat. He was pretty sure he shouldn't take anything the Mayor wanted to offer him, but his mouth actually watered at the idea of something from the Mayor's personal bar. The Mayor always kept the best stock, much better than that fiery beer Jo had given him back at the Mercy House. "Th-thank you, sir." 

"Not at all. We've got to keep our eyes out on each other, don't we, Sam?" The mayor offered him a tumbler full of something thick, dark, and smokey. Sam tasted scotch as he put it to his lips, and he tossed the whole glass back in a single go, feeling stronger than he had all week. "After all, we don't want you ending up like your wayward brother, do we?" 

If Sam hadn't already swallowed, he'd've choked. The Mayor smiled. 

"Please don't try to deny it, Sam. We're both too intelligent for that. Yes, we know that you and Dean Winchester are brothers. Known it for quite some time." 

"How? What -- _how?_ " 

"We've been keeping tabs on you two from the beginning, of course." The Mayor sat perched on the edge of his desk, towering over Sam where he slumped in the chair. "It's not every day that the only two sons of Michael and Lucifer's chosen vessels land in your burgeoning human stronghold at the end of the world, after all." 

The names "Michael" and "Lucifer" had become so meaningless, after years and years of only hearing them used as exclamations and curses, that it took Sam several moments to catch up. The Mayor waited for him, a small smile on his face. 

"Wait," Sam said. "Our . . . parents. . . ." 

"Are the reason we're all here," the Mayor said. "Didn't Dean tell you?" 

"Dean _knew?_ "

 

"Well." The Mayor shrugged. "Maybe not. He was pretty young at the time, after all, and he's never been the sharpest young man. Why, just this morning, he turned down a perfectly good opportunity to actually become a _contributing_ member of our society in favor of taking part it what is sure to be a fairly tortuous ritual." 

Sam tried to get his jaw working again. 

"Don't feel bad, Sam. That's what martyrs do, after all. He'll be happier, I think, after it's all over." 

Sam felt the tremble that had left his hands when he took the Mayor's offered drink start up in the top of his neck. "You're going to kill him." 

"Don't be silly. Human life is sacrosanct. He's just simply likely to die." 

Sam shook his head. "What _are_ you?" 

The Mayor smiled again, as though he'd been waiting for just that question. "I'm the one who's going to help you fulfill your destiny, Sam. Sister Margaret has explained your destiny, hasn't she?" 

"She said I'm going to save the world." 

The Mayor stood up, circling around behind Sam in his chair. "You're going to put an end to this war," he said. He put his hands on Sam's shoulders, kneading. "We've only been trying to help you get ready. Your brother was going to hold you back. Shift your focus. Do you understand me, Sam?" 

Sam nodded slowly. The Mayor clapped his hands, startling Sam, then came back around to face him again. 

"Excellent. But before we get down to all that, you have an anniversary to finish planning! And don't you worry, we've arranged the _perfect_ grand finale for the main stage. I think we'll all find it really . . . motivating."

"Of course," Sam said, not looking up at him. "I'll get right on it." He tipped his head up, though his eyes stayed focussed on the desk. "Don't worry, sir. I've already got something in mind." 

"That's my boy," the Mayor said, nodding. "Get on with you. And let me know if you need another drink." 

Sam smiled. "Thank you, sir. For everything." He turned to leave before the Mayor could notice that his expression didn't reach his eyes. 

The grand finale on the main stage was obviously whatever the Mayor had planned for Dean. Which meant Sam had all of a day and a half in which to arrange the rest of the festivities -- and work out how he was going to use them to take down the government and rescue his brother, all at the same time. 

First thing first, he was going to need some coffee. 

*

Dean shifted, trying futiley to find a position that didn't send shooting pains from his leg up through to his face. What kind of sick fuck did you have to be to make a man with a broken leg _kneel?_ Even for the bunch of rejects the Guard was made up of (and yes, he included himself in that assessment), that was pretty fucked up. 

Not that they could get him all the way down on both knees, not with the splint they'd strapped to his leg when they first brought him in. Dean had watched the thought of taking it off flick through his captors' faces -- a couple young guys, no one Dean knew personally -- but in the end, they left him at least that much support and relief. Instead, he had all his weight resting on his uninjured knee and shin, while his splinted leg stretched out behind him, shoving his whole weight forward. He was pretty sure he'd end up faceplanting were it not for the chain that wrapped around his wrists and dragged his arms and shoulders back. The chain was bolted to the floor somewhere behind him, just as the one that hooked up to the collar they'd put around his neck was bolted down in front of him. 

Well, he supposed he could at least probably still fall over sideways if he really had to. He was definitely precarious enough on his one knee to do so. 

They'd taken off his shirt when they got him out to the tented stage in the main square, too early for the place to have filled up with the morning's pedestrians, on their way to jobs or already working them (begging, Dean knew from experience, was _absolutely_ a full time job). He could hear them out there now, chattering voices swirling together in an incomprehensible mass, probably filled with conjectures about what was being set up behind the curtains on the stage. The city had been gearing up for the anniversary celebrations for ages, now, and with only a day or so left to go, there wasn't much left most folks wanted to talk about. For most people, Perdition was an oasis, the perfect shelter from the chaos of the war raging outside. Official word in the papers and releases from City Hall was always full of reports of the hellish state of the rest of the world, of plagues and roaming packs of ravenous croats -- who had all vanished years ago actually; from what Dean heard from the roamers, there hadn't been an outbreak in almost a decade. The citizens of Perdition were kept scared enough to make things like branding criminals and closing the gates to visitors and immigrants alike sound like a small price to pay. 

What would they think if they knew the truth? That one of their enemies was himself running the city, that the world outside, while certainly offering no guarantee of safety, was nowhere near the deathtrap they'd been led to believe it was? 

He was broken out of his reverie by the clanking of chains, and looked around to see the Guardsmen locking another pair to bolts on either side of him. They yanked his head roughly side to side as they attached the chains to his collar. 

Well. There went the falling sideways idea. 

"You got anything to say?" the Guardsman on Dean's right asked, hand now cupping Dean's face. 

"What, like 'not guilty'?" Dean asked, sneering. The guard smirked back, pressing his fingers and thumb into the joints of Dean's jaw, forcing his mouth open. 

"I'll take that as a 'no'," he said, and then he was cramming a gag past Dean's teeth, its hard rubber wedging his mouth open and pressing his tongue down. Dean snorted a protest through his nose as the guard yanked back on the straps that wrapped back around Dean's head before securing it in place. Dean stared up at him and his partner as they straightened and yanked on the chains around his wrists. "Yeah," the gag guard said, dusting his hands off on each other like Dean was some dirty thing he'd been obliged to touch. "I'd say he's not going anywhere." 

Dean yanked on the chains again, trying to make them make as much noise as possible. There wasn't enough slack to get more than a faint rattle from them. The guardsman smirked. "You got the stuff?" he asked. 

His partner, who looked somewhat less amused by the situation -- which wasn't saying much, really -- nodded silently and pulled a large white piece of cloth from his bag. Dean frowned, grumbling behind his gag again as the guard shook it out. It was decorated with gold thread embroidery, full of symbols Dean didn't recognize. A small black hood fell out of the cloth and the first guard stooped to pick it up. 

"Say goodnight, asshole," he said, coming over and yanking the hood -- more of a bag, really, but made from a stretchy, fitted knit that allowed just enough air through for Dean to breathe, but not enough light to see. "Give me that," he heard the guard demand, his voice barely muffled by the hood, and Dean heard sharp rustles of fabric before he felt what he assumed was the white cloth settling down around his shoulders, pulled forward to come together beneath his chin. The giant cloak had its own hood which he felt them pull up over his head, adding an extra level of dim to Dean's world behind the black mask, and it extended far enough across the floor to cover the chains and Dean's outstretched leg. Dean struggled to breathe deep and even through his flared nostrils as he felt them move away, listening for the sounds of their actions as they cleaned up around him. Then there was another sharp sound of fabric moving, and he heard a gasp rise up from the people in the square. 

The curtain had been drawn back, and he'd been revealed. 

Someone started applauding. Dean's hands jerked in their chains, his first instinct to flick the jackass off. He shook his head, but the cloak was made from too heavy a fabric to be shaken off with his limited range of movement. He heard someone laugh out in the audience and stilled. He didn't want to make a spectacle of himself. That'd never been his goal. 

"Mommy, look," a young voice said from somewhere not too far in front of Dean, he guessed probably the end of the stage. "What does it say?" 

"'Here kneels the Adjudicator,'" a woman's voice read. "'It is for him to listen, to observe, and at the end of one day and one night, to pass judgement. With his attention may Perdition grow ever stronger, and with his sacrifice, may this 20th anniversary mark the beginning of centuries.'" 

Adjudicator? That didn't sound like a thing. Dean as almost certain that couldn't be a real thing. 

"He looks silly," the child said, and Dean huffed silent agreement. 

"He must be very noble," the mother said. "Now come on, sweetie. We'll be late for school." 

He heard their footsteps on the pavement as they moved away and gave one last jerk on the chains holding his hands fast behind his back, the ones holding his head and upper body in place. His leg throbbed a steady protest, his hip starting to join in as it objected to being held in such an unusual position for so long. 

One day and one night. He'd best get comfortable, then. It was going to be a long time before he got out of here. 

* 

Sam found the Mercy House again on his lunch hour. 

He wasn't sure if Dean and Jo had led him through the dumpster entrance to fuck with him or not, but it did turn out to have a regular front door, one he'd found out about on his second visit, when he'd met up with Dean to go stake out the building that had turned out to be the secret armory. It was almost as innocuous as the dumpster, just a dusty old storefront, the windows caked with decades of grime. Folks had stopped paying attention to places like these years ago, once everything of use had been pretty much stripped out of them. It hadn't even occurred to Sam that those without other options would have slipped back in, reclaiming the places for their underground society. He'd never really had to think about it before now. 

The doorway was made somewhat less innocuous by the barefooted, raggedly clothed man who stood outside of it, his back ramrod straight as he surveyed the few passersby. Sam winced inwardly, wondering who had told the angel he could just hang around outside. 

"Castiel," Sam hissed as he came up. "You could wait inside, you know." 

"No," Castiel said, tipping his head slightly to one side. "I could not." 

Right. The angel warding that decorated the exterior of the building was so pervasive throughout the city that Sam had stopped consciously noticing it. He wondered if there were any buildings Castiel could actually enter, other than the one in which he'd been held captive. 

The dumpster, though. That had been graffiti clear, hadn't it? 

"Come on," Sam said, waving Castiel after him. He didn't have to look back to know the guy was following, though he didn't make a sound with his barefeet on the sidewalk. Castiel's very presence made Sam's hair stand on end. 

"You've fed," Castiel said. 

"I'm sorry?" said Sam. He hadn't actually eaten since -- well, before the raid on the warehouse, actually. All he'd had was a couple cups of coffee and the drink in the Mayor's office. 

"Demon's blood," Castiel said. "It's influence wasn't so prevalent, last night. I'd hoped you were weaning off of it." 

"What the hell are you talking about?" Sam shook his head. "I'm not a greaser." 

Castiel's brows furrowed, and Sam imagined him tucking away that little bit of slang in the back of his mind. "You are a greaser," he said. "Sometime since you left this morning, you ingested a demon's blood. You didn't know?" 

Sam rolled his eyes. "You've just been locked up too long, man. Your grace is low, that's why you couldn't go get Dean, remember?" Castiel opened his mouth as if to protest, but by that point they'd made it around the building to the back. "Here, can you climb in there?" 

Castiel didn't seem at all put off by the fact that it was a thing usually reserved for trash. He lifted the lid and with no small amount of awkwardness -- spiritual energy wasn't the only kind of grace this guy was low on -- clambered over the side and in. Sam followed, landing in a crouch on the old foam mats that lined the floor. He pulled a pen from his pocket and used it to prop the lid open a few inches, providing some light, and got his first good look at what the place actually looked like. 

It was tiny, of course, not tall enough to stand up in nor long enough to lie down flat, and the hole in the back that lined up with the door to the Mercy House store room was rusted along the edges, the jagged points wrapped in fraying duct tape to keep them from cutting into the unwary. Other than that, though, it was surprisingly . . . cozy. The mats on the floor, though dusty and sagged into lumps, had obviously been carefully arranged, once upon a time. They stacked higher on one end of the dumpster, and there was even a threadbare blanket folded up in the far corner. A positively ancient flashlight was duct taped to the wall above the improvised bed, aiming down, though Sam guessed it hadn't actually lit anything in years. There were other marks along the walls as well, residue of former duct tape but also little chalk scribblings, mostly scuffed too much to make out details, but he could make out letters, here and there, with an overabundance of childish D's and S's. 

"Oh great," Sam said. "He lived in a _dumpster_." 

"I don't think it was that great," Castiel said, his brows furrowed again. 

"That's not what I -- nevermind." Sam shook it off. It wasn't his fault Dean hadn't followed him into Billy's. His brother could have had just as nice a childhood as Sam did, but he'd decided to live in a dumpster, instead. Someday, Sam would get around to asking him _why_. He wasn't entirely sure Dean would answer, but he'd at least get the chance to ask the question. 

The door to the Mercy House slid open a crack, and Jo peered through. "What are you two doing in there? We can hear you echoing all over the house." 

Sam smiled and gestured her in with his head. "Cas here can't come into the house. I figured this was better than trying to talk out on the street." 

Jo slid the door open further and climbed in, sliding it shut behind her. "I don't really see why he's still around at all." 

"I can get out through the gates," Castiel said. "But I'm not certain I'd be able to get back in." 

"That's how it usually works, yeah." 

"I don't want to leave until I know that both Sam and Dean are alright." 

Jo gave a grudging shrug. "Fine," she said. "Just know none of us trust you people for a _reason_." 

Castiel nodded solemnly. "I do. I have for quite some time. I once worked with my brothers, did my part in bringing on this war that has caused you all so much trouble, but I was shown long ago the error of my ways. I've been trying to make up for that error ever since." 

"So you're the _good_ angel," Jo said, not sounding like she believed it in the least. "Yay for us." 

"He saved my life," Sam said softly, and Jo snapped her head over to glare at him. "Dean said in the warehouse that he saved both of us, once upon a time." 

"Yeah, he also screwed with our communications so I couldn't warn you guys to get out of there in time," Jo said. "And then abandoned Dean to get captured by the Guard." 

"That was an accident," Castiel said. "I was not in complete control of my grace, or its interference with human electronics. They'd been bleeding me for quite some time." 

"You feeling any better from that?" Sam asked. "Any more, uh, graceful?" 

"I'm strong enough to assist in a rescue, if that's what you're asking," Castiel said. "I'm not sure I could transport Dean, but I should be able to heal him. He was quite injured when I left with you." 

Sam nodded. "Good. We can take care of the rest. Jo, you have a way of reaching your family on the outside?" 

Jo shrugged. "Sure, of course." 

"Good. Let them know to get their gear together. I think I've found them a way in. They'll need to brush up on their performance skills." 

Jo sighed. "Sam, not every group of travelers --" 

"Is made up of circus folk, I know." Sam held up his hands. "But at least one of them must be able to dance, or tell jokes, or something, right?"

"I guess. What are you thinking?" 

"I'm thinking Perdition _loves_ a parade." 

*

Dean's legs had gone numb. If he was very, very careful, he might even be able to get them to stay that way. It was a nice change from the literally gut wrenching pain of his broken leg. 

He had no way of telling, beneath the darkness of his hood, just how much time had gone past, but from the rise and fall of the sounds around him, he guessed it was maybe about midafternoon. The crowd had thinned and swelled and thinned again, and he was just starting to hear a few extra voices gather around for the after work rush. That put him at at least eight hours stuck here on his knee, leaning ever so slightly into alternate chains in order to give the various bits of his body as much of a rest as he could. He'd heard the sign out in front of him read aloud so many times he could recite it from memory by now, though he was no closer to working out exactly what the Mayor hoped this "ritual" was meant to accomplish, beyond giving the town a spectacle and crushing Dean's soul. 

Well, he could thwart one part of that, at least. Dean had spent his whole life in discomfort, tied in place metaphorically if not physically. He could handle a few more hours of this. 

So he held still, tried not to jar his leg or drool too much around the damned gag in his mouth, and waited. 

The after work rush was much larger than the morning or lunch rushes. Word had spread about "the Adjudicator", and more and more people came out to see him. Most just oohed and ahhed over his commitment and sacrifice or whatever. A few people wondered if there was anyone actually under the giant cloak, or if Dean were some kind of wax figure or effigy. 

Someone threw what felt like an egg at Dean's head. That was when Dean learned there was a Guard contingent standing on hand, as the offender was dragged from the crowd. 

As night fell -- Dean guessed, anyway, from the way the air around him cooled, though his face still sweated with the heat of his own breath against the mask -- the crowd started to thin out again, enough so that Dean could make out individual voices. He knew listening played in somehow to the Mayor's plans, but he hadn't reached the fugue state he knew was coming, and listening was about the only thing left he _could_ do. 

And now that he knew for sure who that voice belonged to, he wasn't sure he could _not_ listen if he wanted to. 

"Hey guys," Sam said, somewhere off to Dean's right. "How's it going?" 

"Had one vandal," the guardsman reported. "Other than that, this is the most boring shift I've ever pulled." 

Sam made sympathetic noises. "And the prisoner?" 

"Wiggles around, sometimes. Bonds are holding, though." 

"You really think this ritual thing will work?" 

"Hell yeah," the other guardsman chimed in, his voice moving across the stage in front of Dean. "I heard they did the same thing out in New Vegas at their fifteenth. At the end of it all, it rained beer for two straight days." 

Holy crap, these guys would believe anything. 

"If that happens," Sam said with a laugh, "you can have my share. I'm not drinking any beer off the streets. Hey, why don't you guys take five? I can keep an eye out around here."

"Uh, no offence, sir," the first guard said. "But you're not exactly trained for this sort of situation." 

"I guess not. How many ritual sacrifices have you guys been trained to handle?" 

"He's got a point, Steve. 'Sides, all this talk of beer's making me wanna take a leak." 

"Then take a leak. Sir, you want to take on Joe's post, be my guest." 

"Thanks," Sam said, sounding legitimately excited and proud. "I've always wanted to try being on guard for a bit." 

The guardsman snorted. Dean actually empathized. Sam didn't look like he could guard a flea. 

Things went quiet again for a little while, and then Dean felt a few tugs on the left side of his cloak. 

"Hey," Sam whispered. Dean resisted the urge to turn his head towards his voice. "You doing okay?" 

Seriously? Dean wished Sam could see him roll his eyes. 

"Okay, stupid question," Sam said. "Just hang in there. This is the only hole we've got tonight. These guys are being cycled out in an hour by a couple older guys, real lifers, no way would they let anyone get this close." 

Dean tried to nod without giving anything away. He knew better than anyone how hardcore some of the Guard could get. 

"Tomorrow's the anniversary celebration, and you're the grand finale," Sam explained. "That's going to be our window. Jo's family is in the parade, which should get them right up close to you." He took a deep breath, and Dean tipped his head just a little bit towards him. "I know there's not really anything you can do to prepare or help out," he said. "And I'm pretty sure that's going to annoy the shit out of you. But just -- try to relax. We've got this. It's time to let us take care of you." 

Dean snorted, but wasn't sure the sound made it out past the mask. 

"Yeah, well, same to you, jerk," Sam said. And then he was gone. Dean heard Joe come back from his pee break, and Sam offer his goodbyes, and a good luck Dean was pretty sure was aimed at him, specifically. A small eternity after that, he heard the shift change. The new guardsmen were old pros, alright. After a brief exchange about the low temperature for the evening, they didn't say another word, and Dean was left with only the distant bark of a dog to listen to. 

It was going to be a very long night. 

* 

The parade was spectacular. Even without coming at it from a "let's overthrow the government and rescue my new-found brother, not necessarily in that order" standpoint, it was beautiful thing to behold. 

If there was one thing that Perdition knew how to do, it was throw a parade. 

The whole city turned out, it seemed. They started gathering before the sun even started coming up, lining the streets of the parade route, some carrying coolers and picnic baskets, lawn chairs and brightly colored umbrellas, others just bringing themselves and their enthusiasm. Parents hoisted their young children up on their shoulders before they'd even joined the crowd. The older kids chased each other in and out of the crowds, wielding sticks like swords and shouting mispronounced Latin exorcisms. 

Even knowing what he now knew, Sam had never been prouder to be a citizen of this weird little city. 

Jo found her way to Sam's side as he checked in the newly arrived roamers, letting them know where they fell in the parade order. "You really set all this up just last night?" she demanded. Sam shook his head. 

"Not even I'm that good. I had it most of the way done, already." 

"This is your job. The Mayor's own private parade organizer." 

"Don't worry," Sam told her. "I'm planning to quit the moment we get to the main square." 

Jo smiled, a broad, gorgeous expression. "We pull this off right, you won't have to."

"Better make sure your family is all set, then," Sam said. "'Cause I'm going to be holding you to that." 

She knocked him in the shoulder with her fist, then danced off, back to where her family waited by a heavily decorated old diesel-converted RV. It looked like they'd pulled out every brightly colored object they had and stuck it to the side of the boxy vehicle. The sign on the side read "Turner, Singer & Harvelle: Wanderers and Warriors" and looked just as hasty as the decorations surely were. Sam wondered what it looked like when they were actually on the road. He'd never stopped to think about that sort of thing before, but suddenly he really wished he could see it. 

The parade got started not long after sunrise; anyone who had been dallying or trying to sleep in roused right up by the fanfare of the trumpets that made up the vanguard. The Second Line, a group of roaming performers from somewhere down south, had the pride of leading the anniversary parade, a fact which for some reason made them all laugh. They were followed immediately by a contingent of Perdition's Merchant's Union, who'd been working on their float -- a giant market stall staffed by a rather terrifying papermache man in a top hat and mustache -- since the anniversary celebration was first proposed more than a year ago. Each group had been left to their own devices to design their parade entertainment, resulting in a number of floats and bands, but also dance troops and tumblers and -- ugh -- clowns. Sam wondered what Jo's family had come up with for their performance, but since he'd followed the vanguard through the town to the main stage to make sure everything went according to plan, he wasn't going to get to see it for awhile. 

The city square was a riot of activity, all sides packed with revelers held back by the Guard, who kept the central area in front of the stage reserved for the arriving paraders. In contrast, the stage itself was a sea -- or maybe a pit -- of calm, Dean's silent shape was slumped under the thick white cloak, so still that if Sam hadn't gotten a chance to speak to him last night, he'd think there wasn't a person under all that fabric at all. 

He really hoped there was still a _breathing_ one under there, now. They were banking on Castiel being able to work some of his magic, but Sam was pretty sure they couldn't count on him being able to resurrect anyone. 

The level of noise and chaos only grew as the parade made its way into the square. Too large to fit with all the people, the floats and vehicles all had to be parked on the street leading up to the square itself, though those groups with giant balloons and banners brought them into the square with them. Someone, one of the merchants, perhaps, had brought a large basket of fruit and candy into the square with them, and were throwing them about to the cheers of the hungry crowd. 

Jo's family was the third-to-last act of the parade, and the last tribe of roamers. Sam heard the rumble of their RV pulling to a stop even over the noise of the crowd around him, and climbed halfway up onto the stage to get a good look. Jo and her mother were dressed in a motley assortment of old fashioned dress clothes, long full tulle skirts topped with corduroy and velvet suit jackets and lace cravats. Jo danced around her mother, who moved with a sort of regal grace through the throngs, followed by Jo's two uncles, older men with graying facial hair, the white one with the trucker hat juggling what looked like wine bottles, while the black one held aloft -- sweet Mike, were those _machetes?_ \-- to a roar of approval. Sam wondered what he'd been doing with them before his big olympic finish, then decided that he probably didn't actually want to know. 

The Graceling Corps followed close on the roamers' heels, blank faced and almost subdued compared to the groups that had gone ahead of them. Sam had heard rumors that their supplies would need to be rationed until the government could arrange a new source of grace for them. He thought of the side effects he'd heard about for those trying to go cold turkey off grease and couldn't help but feel bad for the sullen soldiers marching in formation. He thought of what Dean had said, that once you accepted the offer, you couldn't back out under the law. It took a rare man to choose being scarred and outcast over a steady paycheck and housing stipend. Sam shot a glance over to the figure huddled under the cloak. 

Dean still didn't seem to have moved. 

The final act of the parade was, of course, Mayor Ruben Bruckner. He rode proud atop a gleaming white Cadillac, the flag of Perdition waving from each hand and a broad grin on his face. Unlike the other vehicles, the Cadillac pulled steadily into the square, the crowd parting before it as it drove right up to the stage, stopping just in front of where Sam waited. When it came to a halt, the Mayor stood, flags still in hand, and raised his arms in a victorious V. The crowd erupted anew as the guardsmen at each side of the stage stepped forward to assist him across the gap between the car and the stage. 

"Sam," the Mayor said softly as he passed. "Glad to see you've chosen wisely." 

"Yes, sir," Sam said, with a small smile. "I have." He led the way over to the lectern set up on the front corner of the stage, not far from where Dean knelt, accepting the flags from the Mayor when he handed them over, and stepped back, managing to strategically place himself just at Dean's side for the duration of the Mayor's speech. 

The Mayor could get pretty long-winded when he had a good, enthusiastic audience. And with the presence of the Gracelings providing an empathic feedback loop through the crowd, they couldn't help but be enthusiastic. Sam himself felt his chest swell with pride as the Mayor started to speak, and only managed to shut it down with great concentration. 

"Ladies and gentlemen!" A cheer. "Citizens and guests of the mighty city of Perdition!" Another cheer. "May I welcome you on this most joyous occasion, as we come together to celebrate twenty long years of the prosperity of your _human_ race!" The cheer swelled into a roar, just the distraction Sam and his friends needed. He risked a short glance over his shoulder to see the guards at the back of the stage get sidelined or yanked away, replaced by Mercy House residents. Sam glanced back. As he'd hoped, no one seemed to be any the wiser.

The Mayor's speech went on, detailing the history of the city, how even only two years after the disaster at St. Mary's, he and his fellow founders had realized the need to consolidate the might of the human race. How they'd spread the word, bringing in people from all over the country to gather in the sleepy town that would become the walled city of Perdition. How they made the most of intelligence on the best ways to fight back against the demon and angel oppressors, and how, on this day, twenty years ago, the first bricks had been laid, the first spells and wards placed, to form the wall that kept them all secure away from the horrors of the war outside. It was a triumph, he said, a real monument to the power of the human spirit. And now, on this twentieth anniversary, he and his advisors had found one final ritual to cement the security of Perdition for all eternity. 

"So what do you all think?" the Mayor asked, lifting both hands. "Should we finish the ritual?" The crowd roared its assent, and the Mayor leaned back, as if bowled over by their enthusiasm. "Well, alright, if you say so!" He turned to step towards Dean and stopped, looking momentarily startled, when he saw Sam standing in his way. "Ah," he said, then turned to mug at the crowd again. "My assistant, ladies and gentlemen. He's just so anxious to make sure everything goes right this morning." 

He gestured towards Sam as though expecting him to bow, and the crowd roared for Sam. 

"Now, step aside, Sam. I promise we'll have time for your gala afterwards." 

"Of course, sir," Sam said, pitching his voice to the same volume the Mayor so effortlessly commanded. It was harder than he'd expected. "But first, I was wondering if you could tell me the name of God." 

The Mayor blinked. "Now, we don't have time for this, son --" 

"I don't see why not," Sam said, smiling. "It's only two syllables." He turned to look at the crowd, and they roared back their appreciation. Such a group, once riled, would go along with most anything. 

"Sam," the Mayor hissed, voice lowered to a dangerous note almost too deep to hear. "What are you doing?" 

"Tendering my resignation," Sam said softly. "Sir." He looked out at the crowd. "It looks like the honorable mayor is having a little trouble remembering!" he shouted, and they laughed. "Maybe he needs a reminder?" 

The answering shout of " _CHRISTO!_ " must have made the demons in Hell itself flinch. 

The Mayor's face contorted grotesquely, his eyes snapping to a deep, bottomless black. Several members of the Guard shouted, as did not a few of the folks in the audience. 

He had no idea the conspiracy when quite this far. 

"You motherfucking son of a bitch," the Mayor said, voice now loud and clear over the shocked, silent crowd. "You think I won't make you pay for that little trick?" He snapped out his hand and Sam felt himself lifted from the ground, sent tumbling up over the form of his brother into the upright post holding the stage's curtains. Pain flared through his back as he landed, and he panted where he lay for a few moments, trying to regain his breath. The Mayor stalked forward, then stopped, grabbing on to the top of Dean's head through the cloak, yanking backward hard enough to make the chains rattle and the wood slats that made up the stage groan. Sam breathed hard through his teeth and froze, halfway up from his sprawl. "You think I won't make your _brother_ pay?" Another yank, and this time Sam heard the strangled yowl from Dean. " _Do you?!_ " 

"Holy shit!" someone in the audience yelled. Sam honestly wasn't sure if it was their ringer or not. "He's a goddamn demon!" 

The Mayor twisted, managing to drag Dean a few inches with him as he did. Sam heard a popping sound, and hoped to hell that was a bolt in the floor giving way, and not Dean's shoulders. "Of course I'm a fucking demon, you morons! You think running a place like this is something a _human_ could do? Do you have any idea how long it took the other towns to work out even _half_ of the survival strategies we _handed_ you worms?" 

"You mean like exorcisms?" a second voice asked. Murmurs of agreement started burbling around the crowd. 

The Mayor scowled. "Please. Exorcisms are _elementary_." 

" _Exorcizamus te,_ ," Sam began. " _Omnis immundus spiritus_." 

A graceling standing near where he lay on the stage seemed to blink awake, her eyes literally sparking as Sam's voice suddenly got two, then three times louder. He caught her glance and nodded his thanks as he continued. 

The Mayor snarled, flinging Dean aside as he threw out his hand again, and Sam was lifted once more from the ground, this time to be pinned to the support pole, the pressure forcing his breath from his lungs and stopping his recitation. "Real clever, Sammy," he said. "Too bad you forgot the part about binding the demon's powers, first." 

"Didn't forget," Sam gasped out. "Just didn't need it." 

"What?" The Mayor frowned, then turned to look as the Graceling Corps, following the lead of Andy and Old Jim, started climbing onto the stage. "Those losers? They couldn't hold a flea in place." 

"Not alone, maybe," Andy said, and a second group started clambering up onto the stage, this one dressed in civilian clothes of every sort, from rags to business suits, the only thing they shared a particular pallor to their skin, a base unhealthiness that only came from addiction. The greasers. Andy smiled, and almost as one, all of them, from the filthiest street kid to the most put together Graceling raised their hands. The Mayor froze in place, his eyes going black again as he seemed to struggle against an invisible force. 

Sam fell from the post as the pressure against his chest vanished. This time, when he started the exorcism chant, the crowd joined in. 

Exorcisms were elementary. Every citizen of Perdition could recite it from memory. 

Several columns of smoke went up well before the exorcism even got fully underway, demons possessing citizens ditching out now that their leader was incapacitated. Others held out as long as they could before being ejected into the atmosphere, coalescing into a low hanging storm cloud broiling with electricity before it spiralled and sucked away into oblivion. 

Or, well, Hell, anyway. 

The form of the Mayor was the last to give up its parasite, and as the last stream of smoke left its lips, the man who the Mayor had possessed crumpled, his head rolling loosely on his neck in a sickening way that kept Sam from even pretending to try and check his pulse. 

He'd probably been dead for decades. 

The exorcism done, the demons defeated, the crowd erupted once more into chaos. The gracelings and greasers all staggered, even their combined power having struggled to hold the Mayor in place. The Guard, unsure where its responsibilities lay, started to bicker amongst themselves. There was a sudden, immediate power vacuum desperate to be filled, and though Sam knew eyes would start turning to him to fill it, he ignored them all, instead scrambling across the stage to where Dean still lay under the voluminous cloak, the chains that had held him in place now visible past its folds. He fumbled for the knot under his brother's chin and yanked it open, casting the fabric aside as best he could, then yanking off the black knit mask underneath. Dean's face was pale, his cheeks and lips chaffed and bruised under the strap of the gag still stuffed in his mouth, but as Sam lifted his head to get at the buckle, his eyes flicked open and for just a moment, Sam was sure he focussed on him. 

By the time Jo led Castiel over to them, Dean was out again, his head pillowed on Sam's knee, and Sam had made a promise to him and himself that he wasn't going to let him go it alone ever again. 

* 

First there was fire. It always started with fire. 

Sometimes, when he was lucky, it was a contained fire, in a fireplace at home, with the christmas tree and all the little lights, yellow on green and green and red, with Mom's hair and Dad's deep bass rumble. 

It never stayed that way. No matter how much Dean wanted it, _Christmas_ and _home_ never stayed. 

The fire always came bursting up through the floor. Even when it started out small and cozy it always flamed up, spiralled up and bright and _sharp_ , filling all the corners and turning all of Dean's insides to outsides. The green stripped away and all that was left was white and red and red and red. And Mom kissed him on the forehead and said _I love you_ and _be brave_ and Dad handed him Sam and said _run, Dean, now, go_ and Dean ran and ran and ran and he carried Sam as far and as long as he could. 

But Dean was little. He said he was big enough but he was wrong and Sammy got heavy and no matter how hard he tried or how far he ran, he always, _always_ ended up dropping Sam. 

*

"Dean?" 

The bed felt wrong. Dean frowned without opening his eyes, trying to work out what the problem was. It was lumpy, sure, but it was also _warm_ , and Dean wasn't particular, warm was about all he ever asked for from a bed. 

It was also moving, which was weird. 

Rocking a little, side to side, and bumping up and down, but mostly going down, towards his feet, only his feet were _on_ the bed so that couldn't be right, could it? 

It'd really be easier to work all this out if he just opened his eyes. 

"Come on, man. You can do it." 

"He coming around?!" 

"Looks like!" 

"It's about damn time!" 

Dean opened his eyes. It took him a moment to recognize the man staring down at him. Took him even longer to remember he was his _brother_.

"Sammy," Dean breathed, and he smiled. He dropped him, but Sam had gotten right back up. His brother could be sturdy, like that. 

Lucky thing, too, or they would never have made it out of that first fire. 

"Hey, Dean." Sam smiled back. "You have a good nap?"

Dean's smile twisted into a glower. "Screw you, Government Boy." 

"Not any more," Sam said, sounding proud. "I quit. Also, I kind of got the whole town to pitch in on exorcising my boss." 

"See, now that's the kind of politics I could get behind." Dean started to sit up and batted Sam's hand away when he tried to push him back down. "I feel fine, Sam." He looked around, taking in the warped wood paneling on the walls, littered with charms and dried herbs and laundry. He was in the Harvelle family wagon. That explained the moving, at least. "Which is weird because I'm pretty sure I just spent a day wallowing in my own filth with a broken leg." 

"Your leg's just fine. Castiel healed you." 

"Uh huh." Dean looked down at his bare chest, then peeked under the motley quilt he had draped over his waist. "And, uh. The filth?" 

"That would be me." Ellen sat down on the end of the bed. 

Dean felt a smile crawl across his face again. "Bet you thought you were done wiping asses when Jo got out of diapers." 

"Hey," Jo said. Dean looked over to see her sitting one of the benches in the kitchen area, and offered her a shrug. 

"Or at least last time Rufus climbed his way out of a bottle," Ellen said. "Good to see you awake again, kid." 

"Good to see you -- in? Are we still in?" 

"Not for long!" Rufus called. Dean realized he was the one driving. "That mob is about halfway done turning ugly and I for one do _not_ be around to see it!" 

"We're leaving?" Dean asked, staring around. 

"That alright with you?" Bobby leaned around the passenger side seat in the front. "'Cause we were kinda hoping not to have to stop and drop you off." 

"Nah," Dean said, blinking. "It's --" He couldn't say "fine". It wasn't _fine_. His friends were in Perdition, the home he'd built for himself, the kids he'd helped find homes of their own. Andy and Old Jim and Diane -- he wasn't even saying goodbye, here. That wasn't _fine_. "Sam?" 

"It's seriously fucked up out there right now, Dean. People are _freaked_ , and I don't really know what we can do to help them." 

Dean rubbed both hands over his face. 

"Don't pretend you wanted to stay, Dean," Jo said. "You've been itching to come out on the road with us for years." 

Dean shook his head. "I couldn't leave -- well, _you._ " Dean looked at Sam. "I didn't want to leave without you." 

"Okay, so there's that problem solved," Jo said, and gave him a cheeky smile. 

"But -- the others. Old Jim and Diane and --" 

"They know how to handle themselves," Sam said, and when Dean shot him a look, he shrugged. "It didn't take the whole week to figure that much out." 

"So we get to flee the mob, but they have to, what, stay behind and pick up the pieces?" 

"They weren't the ones all up on stage in front of the whole town when the government toppled," Bobby threw in. "Better make up your mind quick, kid. Gate's just up ahead." 

Dean sat up further, trying to angle himself so he could see out the windshield. "Is it _open?_ " 

"Your angel friend's taking care of that," Rufus said. "Or he damn well better." 

"He will." Sam sat forward as well, his head big enough to block Dean's view. He heard the massive groaning sound that always signalled the gates opening, and Rufus poured on the speed. Dean turned to look out the side window, but saw only the brick of the buildings lining the wall. 

"Hold on to your butts," Rufus said, and Dean tried to brace his hands on the thin mattress that served as the foldaway bed as the wall gave way to heavy wooden doors and then -- 

Open field. The grass was dotted here and there with tents and vans and wagons of other traveler groups, but Dean didn't see a single person among them. Rufus kept going past the no-man's land of the wall's immediate exterior, and then they were amongst the trees. 

They were out. Dean had never been out this far before. Not since -- well, close enough to ever, anyway. He blinked, expecting to feel something. A weight falling off his shoulders, or maybe one piling on. A buzz in his chest or magical wall of static or _anything_ \-- but all he felt was the bumping of the RV along the rutted road. There was no dramatic transition. It didn't feel any more right or wrong beyond the wall than it'd felt on the way up to it. 

"Huh," he said. 

"Wow." Sam twisted in his seat, now peering out the side. Of course. Sam's "pretty much ever" was even more ever than Dean's. "We're really out." 

"Best get used to it, hon," Ellen said. "It'll probably be a fair bit before they start letting folks back in." 

Dean shifted back so he sat next to Sam, looking out the same window, and they watched the trees in silence for several moments. 

"Uh, hey," Sam said, half-turning back to the RV. "Can Dean and I have a moment? Just, you know, as brothers?" 

Ellen looked amused. "Sure thing, darlin', but bear in mind, you're in an eight foot by twenty-three foot box with four other people. We do our best, but 'privacy' isn't exactly a staple in here." 

"Oh, right." Sam scratched his head. "Uh." 

Dean rolled his eyes and scooted to the end of the bed, bringing the quilt along with him. "Come on, man, we'll go in the bathroom. It'll be tight, but at least it has a door on it. Bobby!" The older man leaned around his seat again and Dean lifted his chin. "I'm borrowing your spare pants!" 

He was pretty sure he heard a grumbled " _Balls_ " in response and grinned. 

The bathroom was more than just a tight fit, but with the door to the rest of the RV shut and the ones to the shower and closet open, they could both fit with just enough room for Dean to shimmy into a threadbare pair of jeans. "So," he said, when he'd turned back around and found Sam very carefully examining the shower head rather than looking at him while he was getting dressed. "What was it you wanted to talk about?" 

"Uh," Sam said again. " _Us?_ You know, the whole 'hey, turns out we're long lost brothers' thing." 

"Ah," Dean said, leaning back to half sit against the sink. "That. So, I'm you big brother. I dropped you off at Billy's back when we were both kids, we grew up on opposite ends of the tracks, as it were, resulting in me growing up the great hero, and you being a government stooge. What else do you need to know?" 

Sam rolled his eyes. "Okay, for starters: why didn't you come with me?" 

Dean frowned. "What?" 

"When you dropped me off at Billy's. Why didn't you just come in with me? It's not like the sisters would have turned you away." 

Dean swallowed. "Ah. Yeah. That." He shrugged, forcing a smile. "Just didn't really seem like my style." 

"Dean." 

Dammit. He'd only known Sam was _Sam_ for two days, how did the kid already know how to get under his skin? 

"Look, Sam, I wasn't -- I didn't do you any good, okay? You needed better than that, and they could give it to you. Simple as that." 

"What, and you didn't? Dean, you couldn't have been more than four." 

"Five. Actually." Dean tilted his head. "Thereabouts. November, 1984. We'd been on the move for about a year, then." 

"You and me." 

"Yeah." 

"Five year old you, and baby me." 

"What part of this are you not getting, Sam?" 

"The part where you went off to be a street urchin _on purpose_." 

Fuck. He had to keep pressing at it, didn't he? Dean's eyes burned, and he wished he'd found them a bigger space to have this talk in. One he could walk away from would've been good. "You died, okay? That what you want to hear? I had to take care of you, and I couldn't and you just kept _dying_." 

That clearly wasn't the answer Sam had been expecting. He stared at Dean, gaping like a fish. "H-how --" 

"Cas. The angel. You'd -- _die_ \-- and then he'd show up and bring you back and finally it was too much and he brought us to Perdition and pointed to Billy's and said they'd help you, so I left you there. And then Cas left me, because I was too stupid and weak to even take care of my goddamn little brother, much less help him fight the apocalypse." 

Sam was still staring. Dean really needed him to stop staring at him. "Dean. You were _five_." 

"Yeah, and I was useless." 

Sam looked away then, finally, tangling his big ass hands into his hair and staring down at the floor. Dean tried to wipe his eyes while Sam wasn't looking, as though there was any way his kid brother had managed to _not_ notice that he was bawling his eyes out, here. When Sam looked back up, his face looked hollow. 

"Where were Mom and Dad?" 

"Gone." 

"Do you remember when they . . . left?" 

Dean shrugged. "Yeah. Kinda. I mean, I didn't know all the details, just -- they got into a fight. They fought all the time but this was a big one. Mom grabbed you and walked out. She wasn't usually the one to leave. So Dad and I got in the car and we drove forever and he tried to make me stay there while he went to get you. And then there was a fire." A tower of flame, shooting up over the stones of the castle -- probably not a castle, he knew now, but back then, at that age, it was a _castle_. "Dad gave you to me and told me to run, and then he went back in and, uh." Dean bit his lip, trying to make enough sense of what he remembered next to verbalize it. "He . . . lit up. Caught fire, I guess, but it was like it started from the inside out. So I ran. Then Cas showed up and I knew he knew Dad, so I let him help, and -- you know the rest." 

Sam nodded along, eyebrows going up when Dean mentioned the fire, but he didn't look entirely surprised. 

"Man, you can't tell me you remember any of that," Dean said. "You were just a baby." 

"I don't," Sam said. "But the Mayor said something to me, the morning after you were captured. The fire. Do you think it could have been from angels?" 

Dean shrugged. "Makes about as much sense as anything else, sure." 

"Dean." Sam stepped forward half a step, all it took to get right up into Dean's face. Dean had to tilt his head back to match his gaze. "Our mom and dad. They're the center of all this. They're Michael and Lucifer's vessels." 

It was Dean's turn to stare. "You gotta be fucking kidding me." 

The bathroom was a tight fit for two grown men. Adding in a third made it pretty much impossible to move, but Castiel didn't seem much put out by it. 

"He's not kidding you, Dean," the angel said. "Your mother and father are the vessels at the very center of the apocalypse. That's why I returned to Perdition, to find the two of you. We need to save them." 

Dean looked from Cas over to Sam, who stared back, his face this earnest puppy open book that Dean was swiftly realizing he'd never have a defence for. 

"Alright," Dean said slowly. "Okay, yeah. Rescue Mom and Dad. Stop the apocalypse. Don't see why not, we've already toppled a demonic tyrannical overlord, today." He reached over to slide the door to the bathroom back open, because seriously, he was used to _way_ more personal space than this. "I guess we've got work to do." 

End

**Author's Note:**

> So about a year and a half ago I signed up for an AU big bang. I got a whole rough draft done, then Things happened and I realized I wouldn't be able to get the thing whipped into shape by posting and pulled out during artist claims. I figured I'd come back to it someday, fix it up, and maybe use it for another big bang. 
> 
> Two problems with that. One: my brain wandered away from the idea and hasn't managed to make it back yet. Two: using the rough from a big bang I had to back out of at a super awkward moment feels really tacky.
> 
> So, while I signed up for the spn_j2_bigbang this year under the presumption that I'd just edit this sucker for that, I've given up and am posting it as is.


End file.
